How to Load Club Ready Songs Tracks Into Serato DJ With Cue Points Intact

Serato DJ reads Club Ready Songs' cue points straight from the file: every studio track downloaded from Club Ready Songs as an MP3 or inside the DJ pack carries a Serato Markers2 frame with coloured hot cues and a Serato BeatGrid frame with a fixed grid, so you drag the MP3 into the library and the cues and grid are already there. A DJ edit from the DJ Edit page is different: it carries standard tags plus a comment with the cue times, and you place the hot cues yourself. Serato is the only DJ app that reads the embedded hot cues directly, which makes it the fastest path from Club Ready Songs to a deck.

Steps

1. Download the right file

For a studio track, press MP3 on the result or download the DJ pack and unzip it; the pack holds the tagged MP3, the WAV if you exported it, the cover, cue points.txt, rekordbox.xml and a README. For a DJ edit, press MP3 320. Move the files into the music folder you normally point Serato at. Keep the file name as downloaded, Artist - Title, so the library column and the file agree.

2. Drag the file into Serato

Drag the MP3 from your file browser onto the Serato library or into a crate. Serato reads the ID3 tags on import, including the GEOB frames that hold the hot cues and the beat grid, so no extra step is needed. The WAV from the DJ pack does not carry the Serato frames, so load the MP3 when you want the cues; the MP3 is 320 kbps CBR and plays at full quality.

3. Check the hot cues in the Cue panel

Load the track to a deck and open the Cue panel. You should see red at the intro end, orange at the first drop, blue at the outro start and green at vocal in when it was known, up to 8 cues in total. These positions match the lines in cue points.txt, so if a cue looks wrong, compare it against the m:ss.mmm time in that file before you move it.

4. Check the beat grid

The Serato BeatGrid frame is anchored on beat one at the track's BPM, with BPM lock on. With the default Hard start on bar 1 the first downbeat is at 0 and the grid should line up for the whole track without adjustment. If you let Serato analyse the file, it will recompute BPM, which should come back the same; the grid from the tag is kept.

5. Take the key from the tag

Club Ready Songs writes TKEY as a musical key such as Am or F#, plus Camelot in INITIALKEY and Open Key in OPENKEY. To see the tagged key rather than Serato's own analysis, turn on the use key from tag option under Setup > Library + Display. The comment column also shows the full line, for example 8A, 1m, A minor, 126 BPM, intro 16, outro 32, which is useful when you sort or search.

6. Set hot cues for a DJ edit by hand

A DJ edit has no Serato frames. Load it, read the comment column, which ends with the cue list, for example start 0:00.000, intro end 0:30.476, outro start 3:12.000, and set a hot cue at each time. Because the intro and outro are exact bar counts, the intro end falls on a downbeat exactly Intro bars after 0, and the outro start falls exactly Outro bars before the end, so set each cue on the grid rather than by ear. Let Serato analyse the edit for its grid; beat one sits at 0 because the intro loop starts on a bar.

7. Save and organise

Serato writes cue changes to its own database, so the embedded cues stay as a backup inside the file. Put studio tracks and DJ edits into one crate, or use the album tag, which is always Club Ready Songs, as a smart crate rule. The genre tag on DJ edits is DJ Edit, which separates them from generated tracks.

Tips

• Load the MP3, not the WAV, when you want the embedded cues. The Serato frames live in the ID3 tag of the MP3.
• If you retag the file in another tool, keep the GEOB frames. Some tag editors strip unknown frames when they save, and the cues go with them.
• The comment tag on studio tracks has Camelot and Open Key in it, so a library search for 8A finds every track in that key even if the key column shows musical notation.
• For a batch of DJ edits, set hot cues at intro end and outro start in one pass with the grid snapped. It takes seconds per track.
• Studio hot cues stop at 8 because that is the Serato limit written into the file.

Common problems

• No hot cues after dragging the file in. The file is a DJ edit, or a WAV. DJ edits need cues set by hand; for studio tracks load the MP3.
• The key column shows a different key from the comment tag. Serato analysed its own key. Turn on use key from tag in Setup > Library + Display and rescan the tag.
• Cues are a few milliseconds off after you edited the tag. The tag editor rewrote the frame or changed the file's padding. Restore the original download from your Crate on Club Ready Songs.
• The grid drifts late in the track. The track was tempo-shifted or edited after download. Original downloads have a fixed grid; re-download and re-import.