How to Import Club Ready Songs Tracks Into rekordbox With Hot Cues and Grid

rekordbox gets Club Ready Songs' hot cues and beat grid from the rekordbox.xml file inside the DJ pack, not from the MP3 itself: you put the MP3 in a folder named Club Ready Songs, point rekordbox at the xml in Preferences, import it from the rekordbox xml node and drag the track into your Collection with its cues and grid attached. rekordbox reads the standard tags from the file, title, artist, album, BPM and key, but it ignores the Serato frames, so the xml is the route. DJ edits from the DJ Edit page ship without an xml, and for those you set hot cues from the comment tag.

Steps

1. Download the DJ pack

On the studio result, press DJ pack to download the zip, then unzip it. Inside are the MP3 named Artist - Title (Extended Mix).mp3, the WAV if you exported one, the cover JPEG, cue points.txt, rekordbox.xml and README.txt. The rekordbox.xml is a one-track collection: a TEMPO entry with the grid at 0.000 and the cue points written as POSITION_MARK hot cues.

2. Put the MP3 in a Club Ready Songs folder

Create a folder named Club Ready Songs and move the MP3 into it. The Location in the xml is file://localhost/Club Ready Songs/ followed by the file name, so a folder with that exact name keeps the import from asking where the file is. If you keep your library elsewhere, that is fine; rekordbox will ask you to relocate the track once, and you point it at the folder you chose.

3. Point rekordbox at the xml

Open Preferences, then Advanced, then Database, and set the rekordbox xml path to the rekordbox.xml you unzipped. A rekordbox xml node then appears in the tree on the left of the browser. If you do not see it, check the view option that shows the xml node in the same Preferences area.

4. Import the xml

Choose File, then Import, then import rekordbox xml, and pick the rekordbox.xml from the pack. Expand the rekordbox xml node, where the track appears inside its playlist. If rekordbox asks to relocate the file, point it at the Club Ready Songs folder from step 2. This is the moment the hot cues and grid come across; a plain drag of the MP3 skips them.

5. Drag the track into Collection

Drag the track from the xml node into Collection. Load it to a deck and check the hot cues: intro end, first drop, outro start and vocal in when known, each at the time listed in cue points.txt. The grid starts at 0.000 at the track's BPM, and with the default Hard start on bar 1 the first beat is at zero and the grid holds across the track.

6. Decide on key and memory cues

rekordbox runs its own key analysis and will show its result rather than the TKEY, INITIALKEY or OPENKEY tags. The tagged key is still in the comment, for example 8A, 1m, A minor, so compare the two if they disagree. The imported cues are hot cues; if you prefer memory cues for intro end and outro start so they survive a hot cue bank change, add them in rekordbox at the same positions.

7. Add DJ edits by hand

A DJ edit downloaded from the DJ Edit page has no rekordbox.xml. Add the MP3 320 to Collection directly, let rekordbox analyse it, then read the comment, which ends with the cue list: start, intro end and outro start as m:ss.mmm times. Set a hot cue at each. The intro end is exactly Intro bars after zero and the outro start is exactly Outro bars before the end, so snap each cue to the grid.

Tips

• For more than a handful of tracks, use the rekordbox.xml link on the Crate page instead. It exports every ready studio track, up to 500, as one collection with a playlist; the per-track xml in the DJ pack is for one-off imports.

• Keep the folder name and the original file name. Both are written into the xml Location.

• Import the xml before you drag the MP3 into Collection. If the plain file is already there, rekordbox treats the xml track as a duplicate and the cues may not merge.

• MP3 320 CBR and the 24-bit 48 kHz WAV are both fine for export to a USB device for CDJs; the cues and grid are stored in the rekordbox database, not in the file.

• Hot cue colours in rekordbox follow your rekordbox settings, not the Serato colours written for Serato.

• Set the xml path once. Later packs only need File, Import, import rekordbox xml and a drag from the node.

Common problems

• The track in the xml node shows as missing. The MP3 is not where the Location says. Put it in the folder from step 2, or relocate it when asked.
• The hot cues did not appear. You dragged the MP3 into Collection instead of importing the xml. Remove the track and import from the rekordbox xml node.
• The key differs from the comment tag. rekordbox analysed its own key. Either is usable; the comment shows the Camelot and Open Key for reference.
• A DJ edit has no cues. DJ edits never ship with an xml. Set hot cues from the comment tag; the times are exact bar boundaries.