Hi guys!

Last time I DJ'd was about 4 years ago, and that was a residency in a Party Bar in a nightclub, so most of the music I played was 60's, 70,s and 80,s.

Now I am planning to start up again, and will mostly be doing weddings, birthdays etc. However, Ive not bought a CD for ages, so I need to get some.

Is there a good way to buy a lot of CD's, covering the last 2 decades in particular, without spending a fortune? I was thinking of maybe buying the Now CD's for the last few years - would that be enough?

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Cheers, Mark.

Now CD's off ebay is a very good start. There will be some gaps as some major artists will not be on there...

Other things - Charity shops... sometimes 0.99 per CD.. Sometimes 0.99 per multi CD box!
Tescos etc have bargain bins of CD's.

Watch out for "recorded by 1 or more of the original artist.." these are often at Petrol Stations. I've been caught by this a few times..


Jason

also check out second hand on amazon.co.uk and play.com. picked up many a bargain compilation on these recently

Yeah beware of anything that says "re-recorded" too.. Might has well just bin them!


100 Hits CDs have been pretty good (by Demon Music Group), there's also 101 Hits Compilations (e.g. 101 housework songs ).

Again with all compilations there are always going to be artists that are missing... (As discussed elsewhere on here)

Cheers,

David

Dig through earlier posts on this site as there have been some good ideas mentioned on here before.

My two suggestions are:

1. Amazon 2nd hand market. Pick the CD's you want (compilations best option) then click on the button that takes you to the Amazon market/available from other sellers. Many will be available for £0.01 plus the compulsory £1.21 carriage. Zoverstocks is the biggest and often the cheapest. I'm guessing he makes his money on the postage. £0.20/0.30 profit per CD doesnt sound much but if you sell them by the bucketload then it's worthwhile. I've bought loads this way and they are all very good. Damaged cases, lost labels and minor scratches don't affect playback.

2. Ebay bulk sales. There's always someone selling their entire CD collection having copied it onto iTunes. These are not always listed in the CD section. You have to hunt around for the wholesale / bulk sale sections. These guys can do it because they're not then using them for public performances. The market rate for bulk buys works out at about £0.50 per CD including carriage. So for example, this guy

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/375-used-cds-mixture...=item3ca87970af

is selling 375 albums or thereabouts so should expect £190 or so for the lot.

Beware of dealers that sell bulk but don't mention what the albums are. They're usually rubbish with a sprinkling of good ones. You can spot these because they have hundreds of feedback points and always other CD job lots for sale. If you can find a seller with a low score and only one sale with CD's on it then it's definitely worth a punt.

The trick then is to buy it, keep the good ones and relist the rest (often 50%+++) as someone who is clearing out his own CD collection (but I didnt tell you that one)

I have found that there is a saturation point on just how many CD's/downloads you need to buy. When you're returning into the game (like I have done) it's easy to panic buy anything and everything. 95% of my 10,000 tracks will probably never get an airing.

There is a hardcore list of tracks that every DJ must have (actually that might be a good new topic in the playlist section) and if that's enough to cover say three hours of hard dancing then you're almost there (background stuff isnt as important as long as it's pleasing to the ear and relevant). If say you get an average of 3 minutes per track (bearing in mind fade ins/clips etc) that's only 60 singles.

I'm betting many DJ's have their core playlist that they use (like me) at most gigs because they know it works and just add/remove as the trends change.

Sorry, went on a bit there, but I've had to learn this lot the hard way and more than happy to share my experience with fellow MDJ's

Let me know if this is of use.


Teez

Hi Guys, thanks for the advice.

I spent some time on eBay/Amazon yesterday evening and maanged to get some good compilations (Now, etc), got about 25 CD's for about £35 inc P&P, so that seemed a good deal!

I only stopped looking as it was getting late, but will carry on my mission over the weekend. Might also try and get to a car boot sale on Sunday, as I remember seeing decent CD's in the past for 50p, £1 etc.

I think I probably have a reasonable selection of songs already covering 70's and 80's, but could do with a bit more selection for 90's and 00's.

Can anyone tell me for the average wedding or birthday, how much of your playlist is 70's, 80.s and how much 90's and 00s'?

I know there are a lot of variations, age of clientelle etc!

Cheers, Mark.

Check out the playlist section of this forum. Lots of history there, and you will start to spot holes of classic tracks in your collection.
At some point, you'll find you have 5 copies of certain tracks, and no Maddona/U2 etc..

I try to have a good coverage, but there will always be gaps and no-one will have every track..

Jason

Thanks guys,

Ive found the playlists, and it looks like a lot of the songs requested now and the same as when I used to do this years ago - not as bad as I thought ;o)

Now, is there any software that will help catalogue my songs? Not actually save them onto the computer, but something where I can insert the disc to grab the track listings, and save tehm to a spreadsheet etc? That would be a lot easier than typing in each song. artist and album - which is what I used to do.

Does anything like this exist (either free, or something I can buy?)/

Thanks again, Mark.

Marky

I've tried loads of different systems (WMP, iTunes, Songbird, DJS,....) and I don't think it will be easy to beat iTunes.

If you just want a spreadsheet then excel will do.

There are loads of cells in iTunes where you can enter album numbers or your own references.

I know you need to copy your tracks onto itunes but there are so many addons that you can use and the Smart Playlists are an excellent way of sorting large collections.

You can then print these to excel. It's also a good way to backup your music (I won't start on Produb).

For anyone using Windows Media Player, firstly you have my sympathies as I wasted a lot of time trying to use this as my core database, secondly if you want to transfer to iTunes it's near impossible as they deliberately use different code.... however I found a great piece of free software called MusicBridge which transfers all data across from WMP to iTunes and vice verca. Easy to find with Google or CNet.com

Teez

The database on Traktor is qutie good, but err you have to pay for that....

I never found anything decent for indexing CDs.. at least not "shove CD into drive" "Hit index", tracks automatically added to a db, for easy searching and use :/

David

mp3/WAV has to be the way forward.

You can construct playlists, sort by BPM, sort by year, sort by Key, word search, pre-program queue points, the list is endless.,,


Teez

Its a shame FLAC and OGG aren't better supported more universally... FLAC is supposed to be as good as the original, MP3 seems to be here to stay it seems!


Cheers,

David

If you must stick to CD's... to avoid the produb license.... trying asking friends and family for old CD's they have.

I posted a status update on facebook for any Donations of CD's anyone could give to me...

I ended up with every single NOW cd.... including the special edition compilation ones.... and some great 50's and 60's discs too!

The 100 hits CD's are ok... however you do end up with some songs that aren't exactly " Disco " worthy.....

----------------

Your other option is to try online music suppliers... such as Napster / Spotify .... ect... however the legalities of these sites are not 100% clear and you would need a produb license if you decide to format shift!

SPOTIFY !!!

Thanks guys, some good advice!

Ive bought loads of NOW and 101 CD's through eBay and Amazon over the lasty few days - probably 30-40 CD's, so Ive made a good start. I can add this to my original collection, most of which I still have, so my CD collection is growing nicely.

For simple indexing, I have found a very simple - yet crude - way to index my discs. I insert them into the computer with iTunes loaded, and when the artist, album, genre etc are displayed I copy and paste it intoo Excel. A bit crude, but does the job nicely and is fairly quick and simple.

Re: using MP3's - this is what I always used to do as I used PCDJ on a laptop when I worked at the club. However, as I am a bit out of priactice, I wanted to start again with CD's so I have something to fall back on if the PC fails.

Thanks again, Mark.

Mark,
I guess you're aware of the thread started by Tezz?

The Top 60 Dance Tracks A Mobile Disc Jockey Must Have

There are some excellent tracks there, (and the Nolans ), and worth checking that you have most of these covered.
I've got most of the "101" collection, and these will cover lots of the "must have" tracks.



@gadget - agree on the OGG format.. As a true open standard, its a shame its only really supported by PC's

Hi VOKF,

Thanks for that. Yes, I found the top 60 list - very interesting, and I am pleased to say I already had quite a lot if it covered from the 70's/80's I used to play when I worked at the club. Still, there are some great songs I would not have thought of playing, which will definately be on my play list in future!

Cheers, Mark.