My music library editorial standards

I have quite a large music library, and I care about keeping it nice and clean a lot. To do so, I use editorial standards — a set of few simple rules that help to make all titles accurate and informative.

Organizing music library

Today, I’d like to share some of these standards.

Words capitalising

I write all words with a capital letter. This way, all titles look cleaner, and it makes them easier to read on CDJ small screens:

Artists with a comma

When the track has several artists, I used to split them with an ampersand. Then I realised that if there are three artists (and sometimes even more), then things start to get messy. So now I simply use commas instead and put artists in alphabetical order regardless of how “big” their name is:

Look how the right column is easier to read. The bottom row on the right in an exception because Xerox & Illumination is a project name as a whole.

Version is mandatory

After the track title, I always add its version, whether it’s an original mix, remix, bootleg, mashup, radio edit, extended mix, dub, vocal, etc. When I see another DJ playing before or after me has some track with the title “Rmx”, I can’t stand it:

Note the last row: DL Edit is my edit. It means that I cut the breakdown off, adjusted the structure to make it more DJ-friendly, or somehow edited the track to make it better fit the mix.