Gone are the days when DJs had to show up to a club with 50 pounds of vinyl; the industry has gone digital, opening up a wealth of options for DJs to streamline the process of finding, playing, organizing, and making money off their music. Almost to a fault, it seems, as there are tons of different options to tempt you to buy, but not all of them are worth their salt.
Going digital has also made the DJ scene far more competitive, as the barrier of entry is next to zero, meaning that the phrase “time is money, friend” is an understatement even to the most demanding hustling DJs out there.
Want to avoid common DJ pitfalls? Dive into ‘Time-Wasting Traps All DJs Eventually Learn to Avoid: Reconsidering Your Off-Deck Hours’ – learn valuable tips here.
So, if you’re looking to supercharge your workflow and lean into the digital era of DJing, here are our seven favorite apps and pieces of software that will streamline your workflow as a DJ. They won’t do the DJing for you, well, one will, but they will help you find music, know your library better, be more comfortable on the decks, and keep your budding career as a professional DJ in line with the modern industry.
DJ.Studio To Test Mixes Quickly
Being a DJ involves the thrill of discovering new tracks for live sets and radio shows, yet the challenge begins once you’ve gathered your music. A USB filled with fresh tracks is exhilarating but daunting, as it’s rare for DJs to grasp how 30+ tracks immediately can seamlessly blend together on the fly.
Previously, I would spend hours nightly for two weeks before a gig, freestyling on my decks and recording each session. Listening to these recordings the next day offered insights into what meshed well and what didn’t, gradually building a comprehensive understanding of how my new music selection could evolve, thereby boosting my confidence for live spontaneity.
DJ Studio’s software, which we covered extensively in our deep-dive review, eliminates much of this trial-and-error through AI, which tests millions of track combinations. While AI serves as a tool rather than a crutch, DJ Studio’s ability to present various mix options and visual maps of song integration has been invaluable in planning my sets for the club, allowing me to DJ even more spontaneously with the music than if I had spent hours running through it on my decks at home.
DJ Studio significantly reduces the time spent experimenting, showcasing its strength as a tool for DJs. It is also amazing for creating podcasts and radio shows, which we do every week (check the playlists below).
Learn More About How DJ.Studio Can Supercharge Your Workflow Here
Selecta For Createdigging For Uncut Gems
Selecta is a powerful tool created by a Cape Town-based Reddit user, whose functionality is surprisingly robust, given that it operates entirely within a web browser. Fueled by feedback from a community eager to discover new tracks, the app’s recent upgrade enhances the user experience with a sleek interface and Spotify integration, simplifying playlist creation and music discovery. It includes features like seed tracks or artists to find similar artists or music, adding depth to the exploration process.
While Spotify alone is a potent tool for music discovery, allowing users to find tracks to purchase on Beatport or Bandcamp later, it often leads to repetitive patterns. Users might follow the same playlists and curators, creating a sort of echo chamber that’s hard to escape. Selecta addresses this issue directly, providing a fresh avenue for music discovery beyond traditional paths. If you’re looking for a way to break out of the usual patterns and dive into a wider array of music, Selecta could be the solution.
Learn More About How Selecta Can Supercharge Your Cratedigging Here
MixedInKey To Label Music Efficiently
If you’ve been DJing for any time, you’re probably familiar with MixedInKey. Its significance to workflow and a set’s overall quality is worth highlighting. MixedInKey streamlines the process of identifying which tracks in your library are likely to harmonize well when mixed. Harmonic mixing aids in track selection by showing how the key and scale of one song will blend musically with another.
This not only helps avoid dissonant song choices, which can sound jarring and disrupt the flow of a set but also assists in making informed decisions about which tracks to play next. Knowing the most musically coherent track to follow lets you concentrate on what matters most, enhancing your performance.
It also helps identify harmonic holes in your setlist when prepping your USB stick for a gig, ensuring you’ll never play yourself into a corner and have to make a jarring transition.
Learn More About How MixedInKey Can Supercharge Your Harmonic Mixing Here
Tribe XR To Use Industry Standard Gear Without $5k Decks
One of the most nerve-wracking aspects of DJing is stepping into the booth of a larger club for the first time, only to realize that CDJs are entirely different from the controller you use at home (which, by the way, should stay there).
At first glance, Tribe XR might seem like a gimmick. While there’s some truth to that, to a certain extent, it offers the chance to DJ on a pretty faithful recreation of Pioneer’s turntables in a virtual setting. This allows you to become acclimated and familiar with what it’s like to play on industry-standard gear without investing thousands of dollars in an industry-standard set of turntables and all that entails.
Want to avoid common DJ pitfalls? Dive into ‘Time-Wasting Traps All DJs Eventually Learn to Avoid: Reconsidering Your Off-Deck Hours’ – learn valuable tips here.
Additionally, if you have a DJ friend who owns the headset, they can offer advice from their home. They can give you tips and pointers on navigating the reasonably complex ecosystem of Pioneer DJ’s equipment—all for around $20.
Learn More About How Tribe XR Can Supercharge Your Confidence On The Decks Here
Lexicon For Fast Music Organization
Digging for new music is always exciting, and managing libraries seems manageable in your first year of DJing. However, once you accumulate a few thousand tracks, not to mention VIPs and mixdown iterations for those who are both producers and DJs, the need for a helping hand to keep everything organized becomes apparent. Rekordbox offers some useful functions for this purpose, but for years, I felt it never quite reached its full potential.
Ever wondered how the past shapes the future of digital DJing? Explore ‘The Future of Digital DJing: Mixing the Past with the Present’s Technology’ – get the full scoop here.
Enter Lexicon, a game-changer with its deep suite of features and highly customizable organizational tagging, making the categorization and organization of massive track libraries as straightforward as possible. This tool is precious for DJs who cover a wide range of genres, such as deep house AND drum & bass AND hip-hop.
Lexicon’s tagging system and organizational toolkit are undeniably significant time-savers.
Learn More About How Lexicon Can Supercharge Your Organization Here
Mp3tag For Handling Metadata And Tagging
Ooooh, the unglamorous world of metadata tagging…
While it’s far from flashy on the outside, metadata helps organize your files and call upon hard-to-find tunes even within your own library. Metadata is crucial when bringing your music into CDJs to play. Sure, having the CDJ show the album artwork of a track doesn’t make or break your flow of DJing, but it is a nice aesthetic. It can be a visual cue that you’ve found the track on your USB that you’re looking for, and that’s just one case of metadata that can easily go missing or not be included when you download music from Beatport or other sites.
What is especially remarkable about Mp3tag is that you can pull tags and metadata prompts from sites like Discogs. This allows you to avoid using unconventional tags you include just because they feel right or accidentally including the wrong tab because of a typo.
It’s not that exciting of a topic, and Mp3tag’s interface is equally uninspiring, but the functionality works as intended and saves you time.
Learn More About How Mp3tag Can Supercharge Your Metadata Here
Kosmo For Managing The Business Side Of Being A Pro DJ
The business side of things is the last thing most DJs think about, and it might be one of the biggest things holding talented DJs back from going pro. Missed deadlines, unsigned contracts, or lack of follow-ups after an initial networking session goes great. All leave DJs with the potential to drop the ball left, right, and center.
Much like the software above, Kosmos is far from glamorous, but it’s an effective platform to manage all of the backend stuff you need to keep things organized. It helps you manage your contacts database, track file delivery for contracts and other documentation, and more. It even enables you to keep track of invoicing, so you can cash in on every exposure that small-town promotor promised (just kidding).
It’s a great tool that doesn’t cost too much and is better than tracking everything on Google Calendar and an Excel sheet, as I did for the first few years of my career.
Learn More About How Kosmo Can Supercharge Your Business Organization Here
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
