Music library editorial standards

I have a quite large music library and I care about keeping it nice and clean. To do so, I use editorial standards — a set of few simple rules that helps 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 CDJs small screen:

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 started to get messy. So now I simply use commas instead and put artists in alphabetical order regardless of how “big” his 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 better fit the mix.