How to Name Club Ready Music Files for a Clean DJ Library

Club Ready Music names a studio track's files for you, Artist - Title (Extended Mix).mp3 and Artist - Title - cover.jpg inside the DJ pack, and names a DJ edit download after the Title field, so a clean library starts with filling Title and Artist / DJ carefully before you build. The pattern Artist - Title (Version) is the one most DJ software and CDJs expect, and it sorts by artist in any file browser. Keep names ASCII, keep them under about 60 characters, and avoid the handful of punctuation marks that FAT32 and exFAT refuse, and your files will move between laptop, USB stick and player without renaming.

Steps

1. Know the names Club Ready Music produces

Unzip a studio DJ pack and you will see Artist - Title (Extended Mix).mp3, the matching .wav if you exported it, Artist - Title - cover.jpg, cue points.txt, rekordbox.xml and README.txt. The Extended Mix suffix comes from the checkbox in the studio mix settings. A DJ edit's MP3 320 and WAV downloads use the title of the edit, which is the Title field you typed or, if you left it blank, the name of the uploaded file. There is no separate file-name field, so the Title is the file name.

2. Fill Title and Artist / DJ before you build

On the DJ Edit page, type the song title into Title and the original artist into Artist / DJ before pressing Upload & analyse. A blank Title is taken from the file name, which is often something like track07_final_v3. The value you enter becomes both the TIT2 tag and the download name, so a tidy Title saves a rename later. If you want your edit identified, add the version in brackets, for example Title (Club Edit).

3. Pick one pattern and stick to it

Artist - Title (Version).ext is the convention Club Ready Music already uses for studio tracks, so use it for edits too. Spaces around the hyphen make the parts easy to read on a CDJ screen and easy to split in a tag editor. Put the version in round brackets: (Extended Mix) for studio exports, (DJ Edit) or (Intro Edit) for Club Ready Music edits. Avoid putting BPM or key in the name; those live in the TBPM and TKEY tags and in the comment, and a file named 126 - 8A - Title breaks the artist sort.

4. Keep names ASCII and short

CDJ-2000NXS2 and CDJ-3000 players read exFAT or FAT32 sticks and show the file name on a small screen, and older CDJ-2000 and 900 players want FAT32. Use plain letters, digits, spaces, hyphens, brackets and full stops. Replace accented letters with their plain equivalents and leave out the characters FAT32 rejects: slash, backslash, colon, asterisk, question mark, double quote, angle brackets and the pipe. Aim for under about 60 characters including the extension so nothing is truncated on the player.

5. Rename from the tags, not by hand

If a batch of files needs renaming, use Mp3tag's or Kid3's tag-to-filename action with the pattern artist - title and the version in brackets. Club Ready Music's tags are already correct, so the rename is one click per batch and the names will match the tags exactly. Do the rename before you import into rekordbox or Serato. Renaming afterwards leaves the library pointing at a file that no longer exists and triggers a relocate prompt.

6. Keep the folder name that rekordbox expects

The rekordbox.xml in each studio DJ pack points to file://localhost/Club Ready Music/ and the MP3 file name, exactly as exported. If you rename the MP3 before importing that XML, the Location no longer matches and rekordbox asks you to relocate. Either keep the exported name for studio tracks, which is already in the right pattern, or import first and rename inside rekordbox so the database follows.

7. Check names on the USB

After you export to a stick, open it on a computer and read the names. Any name that got shortened or replaced with an underscore points to a character the file system did not accept. Fix it in the library, re-export, and the player will display the name you intended. Short, consistent names also make the search function on a CDJ far quicker to use in a dark booth.

Tips

• Use the same spelling of an artist on every file. A - J Smith and AJ Smith are two artists to a file browser and to a smart crate.
• Keep the Extended Mix suffix on studio exports. It tells you and anyone you send the file to that the track has a full intro and outro.
• Write edit versions in brackets after the title, so a search for the title finds both the original and your edit next to each other.
• Dates belong in the Title only for one-off gig edits. For a permanent library, version names age better than dates.
• Round brackets are safe everywhere. Square brackets and curly braces are legal but display inconsistently on some players, so stick to round ones.

Common problems

• The DJ edit downloaded with a file name like audio_master_final.mp3. Title was left blank and took the uploaded file name. Press Change settings & rebuild after filling Title, or rename from the tags in Mp3tag.
• A name shows as question marks on the CDJ. The name contains non-ASCII characters. Replace them with plain letters and re-export the stick.
• rekordbox asks to relocate every track after a rename. The file names changed under the database. Point rekordbox at the Club Ready Music folder when asked, and rename inside rekordbox next time.
• Files sort by title instead of artist. The name starts with the title, a BPM or a key. Rename to Artist - Title (Version) with a tag-to-filename action.