Rekordbox 7 - Complete Guide

So, Record Box 7 is here, and there's a lot of people that love it, and others that absolutely hate it. So, in this video, I'm going to point out the advantages and disadvantages of Record Box 7. I'll talk about the differences between the paid and the free plans. And for complete beginners hitting Record Box for the first time, or perhaps people wishing to prepare their music for USB to play a club show, I'm going to give you a complete walkthrough of how to prepare a set and then export to USB. In short, this video is all you need to know about Record Box and Box 7.

So, firstly, let's start off with the elephant in the room, okay? The issues, man, about Record Box 7. Now, it seems there is a lot of hate around this, okay? And it's pretty much all relating to the performance features. So, it's important to note, Record Box does have two main ways that it can be used. So, you have export mode, where it's preparing your music, and good news, that seems to be working really well. And number two, performance mode, and that's where you're connecting your controller to your computer and you're performing through Record Box, okay?

So, the main issues with the first version of Record Box 7 are performance-related. So, if you have a standalone or you got club gear and you know you're using USB sticks, personally, I'd upgrade to Record Box 7 immediately, as I think the improvements made to export mode are amazing. But if you have a controller, you know, you may want to first know about these problems. So, when in performance mode, some people are experiencing a ton of bugs, from the screen freezing when they're loading their tracks, and you don't want that happening when playing live, all the way to some sound issues. But when looking at forums, there seems to be mixed opinions on this. So, some people are experiencing these issues, and some people are doing the exact same thing, and they're not. So, that comes down to two things, really. It could be that Pioneer's still working through some bugs, which is, you know, more than likely. And it could be that some people may have to update their own computer or update their software or operating system. It's just like both of them aren't working together.

Either way, though, let's say you're already on Record Box, you're using Record Box, and you're killing it on Record Box 6, and you're doubtful about upgrading. Don't upgrade, okay? At least for now. You know, let them work out their bugs and maybe consider it in a few months' time.

But another performance issue is relating to stems, and people are shitty about this, man. Like, people have been waiting for stems, and the truth is, Record Box is way behind stems compared to other DJ software. So, if you're using Virtual DJ, Serato, and you're using stems a lot, now is not the time to be switching over to Record Box. But in saying that, Record Box is boasting huge improvements in their operating system and CPU, and they're promising enhanced loading times and processing speed. So, there's a good chance that it's laying the foundations for really, like, you know, I reckon they're going to come out of nowhere and really do something good to their stems. But the fact that the issues people are having right now seem to be most relating to processing speeds, people are understandably doubtful. They're starting to get shitty at Pioneer, they're thinking, "Too little, too late. [ __ ] them. [ __ ] them."

But then again, Pioneer's in all the clubs, and you want to be a club DJ anyway. I read another comment, though, that someone was having issues with their USB. So, they loaded their music from the new Record Box 7 to USB, and it didn't work with the gear. But just be mindful that some of the old club gear only reads USB 3.0. So, that's got nothing to do with Record Box, that's to do with the USB.

So, in short, if you're already aboard the Pioneer train, woohoo, and you're using Record Box with a controller, you may have doubts about upgrading and you may just want to wait it out a few months and just give Pioneer some time to tweak out the bugs. Their first release, you know, I'm feeling kind of optimistic about it. But then again, I'm an optimistic guy. So, you know, who knows?

But let's say you're using Record Box mainly to prepare music for USB, man, jump over now. Okay? Their improvements to export mode are very exciting for me. Okay? So, number one, they've greatly improved their two-player, now dual-player mode, making crafting playlists and finding tracks that work well together easier than ever before. Plus, they've got auto-generated cue points where Record Box sets cues on analysis based on your personal preferences. Plus, there's this new discovery mode where Record Box suggests similar tracks based on popularity. Like, it's got some AI features in there. So, it's like what people are searching for, similar music, and then you've got checking by BPM, genre, and atmosphere. But pretty cool, man.

However, with the new update, so there are some features that Record Box want people to pay for, mainly the intelligent cue creation. Now, I get it, right? People like, "[ __ ] that, man." You know, "I can do cues myself. I'm not paying Record Box to set cues." I guess it does come down to, okay, let's look at it objectively. How much do you value cue points, and how much do you value your time?

So, I've got this mate, Marcus Medi. Um, I'll link him in. He's a cool guy. We jam all the time, and he's going around a straight at the moment, like doing all these YouTube videos, and he's like, you know, a DJ as well. And I'm flying out to meet him anyway. He's a great guy, but he doesn't really set cue points. So, that means when we jam with his music, it's all uncued, and that means I'm kind of limited to start from the first beat, and we kind of wing it, you know? But what I did was, I was jamming with it the other night, and I said, "Okay, let's just run it through this auto-cue thing." And it went to put like a whole bunch of cues on his tracks. And then when we jammed, having those cue points there with no effort whatsoever, just took me a minute. It put the playlist through Record Box, exported it, bang. But having that, that gave us so much more creative control when playing, and it just made it a lot more fun for me. Sure, some of the cues do need tweaking, but I do find having cues already in place gives us a really cool jumping-off point and allows us to build momentum easily.

If you're new to Record Box, don't get overwhelmed by all the different options. Get the free version right now, okay? Get the free trial, even. And then if you can't access features that you do want, that you feel that you really need, well, then you consider upgrading once you have built momentum.

So, right now, let's jump in. Okay? The good news is, if you already own Record Box, as soon as you upgrade, all your playlists are going to be there, okay? But for those new to Record Box, one very quick thing to note that's really important. Record Box does not create a copy of your music when you drag it into the software. It's simply reading the music from wherever you dragged it in from. So, let's say you dragged in tracks from your downloads folder, then after importing to Record Box, you move them out of the downloads folder, then Record Box will not know where the track has been moved to. And when you go to load the song, it's going to say, "The file cannot be found." So, that is, you could just move it back again, you know what I mean? It's okay. But I think first things first, you need to decide where you want to keep your music. Now, that could be an offline Dropbox folder, okay? That's what I do. I talk about that a lot in my course. But, um, you could even have a music folder, or your desktop, or even iTunes, or even external hard drive. But what it means is, when you download tracks, you then download them, get them into that central music folder that you decide on, and then from there, that central place, you can then drag your music into Record Box.

So, I'm going to show you now the playlist section and some of the new updates to better organize your music library and get started. Firstly, once you open Record Box, there are two main modes: export mode and performance mode. Performance mode is for when you connect your controller to your computer to perform, and export mode is where I do all my pre-preparation without the controller even connected. So, for instance, in export mode, I set cue points, I craft playlists, and I even find tracks that go well together using the new dual players feature, which we're about to jump into. It's, it's really cool, and, um, I basically find, though, the more prep that you do in export mode, the easier it's going to be for you to build momentum when you hit the decks.

So, let's start off by having a quick look through export mode, and we're going to even look at the new layout and tree view. So, here we are. So, you got all these media icons to the left-hand side here, and at the very top, you have Collection, where I can search my whole collection. Over, I've got a search bar, so if I want to actually type in a particular song, I can find it there. I can also search by date added, genre, which is pretty cool, artist, and album. Um, say, date added, I think that is good because let's say I was, you know, doing a whole bunch of music research at a certain time of my life, I could be like, "Oh, wow, that 2024 February. Yep, I did 500 tracks in that time." And I might be like, "Okay, I just want to play around with some of that stuff that I was getting at that period." Maybe I was preparing for a festival at that time. And then you've got what you was doing in May, what I was doing in April. You know, that's pretty cool.

So, then we jump to the next section, which is Playlists. In the old days, it just was a playlist tree view section here, and you could scroll down and you get to your devices and everything. Now, you have these media icons down the side, which does make it pretty cool once you get used to it. But the big thing about the playlist section is now you have tree view and column view. And column view and tree view work together. It's really helpful to organize your playlist into folders. So, for instance, let's say in my tree view here, it's starting to get a bit clogged up with lots of playlists, but maybe these playlists relate to a certain theme. So, a lot of these are relating to an Earth Frequency set that I was preparing for. So, what I could do is, just to clean up the tree view, I could get all those playlists into a folder. So, to do that, I could right-click on Playlist at the top, go, "Create new folder." Let's call it "Earth Freaks Set Preps." Now, in the old days, I'd have to drag those playlists one by one into that folder because you can't select more than one at a time. But in column view, I can actually go, select all those playlists. So, I just like click, and I could go command and, you know, select, you know, different ones, like just ones I want to grab. But if I want to grab them all, just click the top, go, click where it ends down the bottom, so I shift-click, and then I can select them all, drag them all into that folder. And now all of those playlists are existing within that folder. Let me go across to tree view, and you'll see all within that folder. So, if I close that folder, be hitting that arrow, then you can't see them. So, that's the difference between folders and playlists. The folders have arrows next to them, so that means you can open it up.

So, in this one here, the genres, I've actually got a whole bunch of intelligent playlists just built on genres. I've got it and set it up, and I talk all about this in my course. But when new songs are added by a particular genre, out they automatically added to those playlists. It's actually pretty cool, but a little bit more of an advanced feature. Another folder here, I've just got different events that I've been preparing for. It's just a way to kind of keep my music organized.

Okay, so let's pretend you're making your first playlist. So, that's easy enough. Just right-click on Playlist and go, "New," "Create new playlist," or even hit this plus button. And let's call it "New Music May 2024." Then, what we can do is we can go find our music. I just recently did a big downloading session, but I want to get it from downloads to my main music source. So, I've got a music folder here on my desktop. I'll go in here, I'll make a subfolder and call it "New Music May 24." We'll drag those songs into that folder. Cool, cool. Okay, there they are. And then from there, I can just, that's my main music source. I can then drag it into this new playlist. So, I've got my playlist selected here, go grab these songs, drag it in there, and there we go.

Now, that those songs are in that playlist, I can actually go and sort them into multiple playlists. I could go put this song, for instance, in every single playlist I had if I wanted to, and it's not going to create a duplicate copy of that song because what happens is, when you drag music into Record Box, Record Box is reading it from the place that you've dragged it in from. So, let's say you've got your music on an external hard drive, and you drag that song in from the external hard drive, then it's reading it from the external hard drive, and you could make as many copies as you like here, but it's reading that original source file from your main music library, whichever that is.

So, okay, then you're in there, you can sort that into different playlists. You can make different playlists, just hit plus, make as many playlists you like. I usually like doing playlists by genre, maybe events that I'm preparing for, maybe for you, if you're a beginner, it could be like "First Mix," and you just start sorting music from other playlists. Build a lot of playlists, drag music around between playlists is very, very easy.

The next step would really be to set cue points. So, to do that, I can just drag the song up into the top player here, and this is like your mini waveform where you can actually see the whole track. So, that's the beginning of the song, that's the middle of the song, you can see it drop off, and that's the end of the song. And this three-band EQ waveform, the dark blue there symbolizes bass, the orange is more like your mid frequencies, it's like your vocals and personality, and the whites there are kind of like your high frequencies. So, you kind of get an idea there, it's going to drop off the bass, it's going to start building back up, the bass kicks in, obviously, with a bit of vocals, a bit of highs, and then at the end here, probably starts peeling back a little bit. But, okay, let's say I want to set a cue point. So, down here, this is like a close-up view. So, say if I click there, that's in the middle of the song, you know, you get the idea. But say I want to put a cue point just on the first beat.

What you can do is, there's two types of cue points: you can set memory cue points and hot cues. Now, personally, because I run Club Ready DJ School, it's about getting people club ready. I like using memory cue points to map the song. So, that means parts where I can mix in and out, and I've got options, and I'm kind of reading the crowd. But by setting in and out points, it means I can always play the best parts of each song. Don't get me wrong, mixing without cues is also a lot of fun, a great way to get to know tracks. But if I've got a big show coming up, sometimes I like stuff kicking in at the right time and putting together something special.

But anyway, let's say you were setting cue points. Let's say a memory cue to start with. To do memory, I find, let's say on the first beat for now, I can hit Q, and to save it, I hit Memory, and then it comes up here to the side. If you want to delete that, hit X next to it, it's gone. And keyboard shortcut, instead of Q and Memory, is C for Cue. You don't even have to hold it down, just hit C and hit M on your keyboard. So, go drag it up there, hit C, H, M, and there's a cue point as well. So, cue and memory just set a memory cue.

If you want to set a hot cue, it's these buttons here. So, that would be Pad A, and you can actually right-click on that and change the coloring, which is pretty cool. But hot cues, I'd more use to jump around the song real-time. It's a bit more of a performance feature. Not all club gear has hot cues, a lot of them do though these days. But if I was using hot cues practically, maybe it's because I want to skip a section of the song because it's boring, or maybe it's just going forever and I want to get to somewhere. So, it could be playing on phrase, I hit hot cue, jump to a certain place in the track to keep things moving. But you can also go and do performance features too, which I dive really deep in my Club Ready course, along with everything you need to know, all organized. But, um, okay, so that's how you set hot cues.

But let's say then, you know, that could be an inpoint. But let's say now I wanted to do like an outpoint. So, let's say I wanted to mix, let's say I want to mix into the middle here, it drops off a little bit. It would be a creative way to mix, but you know, it's ambitious as well. But let's go listen. So, I'm in here, I'm like, see, I could even loop that a bit. I could do something cool on that. But here's the thing, instead of putting a cue point there, see, I want my song to maybe come in there. I want some time to beatmatch. I want some time to do my transition. So, if I go back a couple of phrases, and I've got a cue point there, I know if I come in at that cue, I might have some time to beatmatch and some time to do my transition. Drops off, bang, when new song comes in. I could loop that, I could start doing really creative stuff.

But here's the thing, re-jumping back phrases, if you don't know what a phrase is, I do suggest that you check out my Club Ready DJ course, phrasing. It's not just something to understand, it's something to be conditioned. It's not a gray area. You have to phrase your music. You have to make sure the changes line up. So, what happens with dance music and the phrases are typically eight bars. Sometimes the changes might more be like 16 bars for the deeper genres, and sometimes even four bars for pop music. Again, I go into all this into my course and how to hear it and how to actually know exactly where the phrases are without even counting, like just feeling it. There's clues. It's a lot of it's very exciting, actually.

But let's pretend, you know, a little bit about phrasing already. Let's say I want my new song to become dominant there. I could go find a potential mix point, then I might give myself some time to beatmatch and do my mix. So, over here to the side, for you, it probably says four beats. If you've done nothing, go and select eight bars. That's one phrase for this genre, at least. And then I could, using these arrows, I can then jump back at eight-bar intervals. Personally, I like to go back back 16 bars. So, if I go back twice, one, two, and then let's say I set a cue point there by hitting Q and Memory, or C and M on your computer keyboard, that then does a cue. And that means that I could mix from there, potentially mix my new song in at this second cue, bring it in there. That's probably where I'd swap my bases. Could loop that from prevent coming back in, and, you know, it just gives me a bit of creativity.

Now, another method is, safe, the song's going very, very well. Maybe I want to play the full song. I could go find where it drops off here. So, if, even though this is not technically an outro, it has dropped off enough for me to be able to do a transition, and I can always reduce any unwanted frequencies with advanced EQ work. So, let's go find where that change is. Also, go back eight, 16. Okay, Q and Memory to save that. And that's using memory cues.

Let's say I want to replace the drop, for instance. Maybe I could be like, "Okay, what's the drop here? Is that want to play that?" Go find that. Go back 16 bars. Okay, you kind of get used to looking at the cues and knowing what they look like from looking at it. For this one here, maybe I'll have one at the beginning, at 16 bars before that bit. I might even have one there, 16 bars before it breaks in. And I might even have a mix-out option here. Go back eight, 16. Have a mix-out option. Go find the outro. So, you get quite good at seeing it quite quick. Go find that. Go back eight, 16. I'm just using the arrows on my keyboard there, and going C and M. It's all on my keyboard. It's happening quite quickly.

But, okay, so that's how you set cue points. But this is where the game changer comes in. Outside of mixing key, Record Box is the first ever DJ software to add automated cue points. Now, I tested it this morning, and I think it's really cool, actually. But the bad news is, after your 30-day free trial, I believe this is a paid feature. So, my advice would be, perhaps get your whole library updated now with cues, and then when the trial runs out, you can decide if you want to keep your subscription going or not. But either way, this is how it works.

So, go to the playlist panel, and then at the top, you'll see it says "Cue Analysis Playlist." This is the playlist Record Box will use as a reference to identify how you want your cue points set. So, what I'd do is, I'd go grab a dozen tracks and set very generic cue points for these tracks. And what I mean by generic is cues that are very straightforward. So, for instance, if you want to model the way of mapping each track that I just explained, right? You could go and find all the major changes in the track, and then you can set cue points six bars earlier to give yourself time to mix in and do your transition.

Now, once you've set cues for at least several tracks, and those tracks are in that cue analysis playlist, if not, just drag them into that playlist. Then go across to the settings, select analysis, then select the cue analysis tab. And then, as long as "Auto" is selected, and you've turned on "Set Cues During Analysis," then Record Box, on analyzing your tracks, will do its best to set cues based on your personal preferences. You can also ask Record Box to set hot cues or memory cues, and you can also tell Record Box how many cues you wish for them to set. Now, personally, I use hot cues to jump around the track real-time. So, if you wanted automated hot cues, just go and set them on all the big changes in the track. So, for instance, the first beat of the track, perhaps the first beat of the breakdown, perhaps where the vocals kick in, perhaps the first beat of the buildup, the first beat of the drop, you know, the first beat of anything kind of big. However, if you're using memory cues, I would set them 16 bars before the major transition points to give myself time to mix in and do my transition.

Now, you can also prevent Record Box from overriding cues you've already set. And if you have the "Add Comment to Cue" switch on, it'll put a comment next to the auto cue point, letting you know that it is an auto cue. This is really great, as you then know the difference between cues that you personally set and cues Record Box has set.

Now, another way to use the auto-cue feature is to set them manually. But in my opinion, that feels a little bit limiting, as you can only add them every eight or 16 bars into each track. So, say, if you said eight bars, every eight bars, you'll have a cue point until you run out. Okay? So, I've messed around with it a bit, and I believe it's pretty good, okay? And I don't know if it's so good that I'm going to use it to overwrite my old cue points, but I'm definitely going to leave it on for new tracks that come into my library, as it's enough to get me started. And then if I need to move around the cues that you've done automatically or delete some, I'll just do it on the fly. But it definitely gives me a jumping-off point, which means less time setting cues and more time finding combos and jamming, which, man, I welcome that big time.

Once you have a playlist with either cues that you have set, automated cues, or a mixture of both, before hitting the decks, I'd actually jump across to the dual player mode. Mode basically, try and find tracks that go well together and create a bit of a playlist order. This means when you actually hit the decks to play, you can bring playlists to life with maximum ease and efficiency. So, let's say we're in export mode here, you can move across to the next dropdown arrow, and then we can select two players or dual player. And in the past, it was this, it was two players, and what I could do is, and we'll get to test our cue points now a bit too, it would be cool. So, let's say drag this one up into the second player. Um, because there's only a crossfader going between them, I'd probably just hit sync on both. And because I'm syncing, I want to have Master Tempo on, that's going to hold the key. So, it's like an anti-chipmunk button. And quantize there as well, it'll have that on. That little cue, and that's to, you know, snap everything to the beat, you know, like if I'm looping, keeps those loops tight. It's really cool.

Okay, so then what you do is, you can hit play on the top one, and I can hit Q. I can hit play on the bottom one, and then say, then you can actually, I'll just hit play, you can then crossfade between them, okay? And that's actually really great. And I'll give you an example of how I was doing this, and this is more just finding songs that go well together with the goal of putting these songs into an order. So, let's say then I'm going to mix my new song from this cue point on this last cue point here. Let's give that a go. Looks like I picked a song that's a slightly different genre, but it doesn't matter, we'll get the idea from this. Okay, but let's say now I'm mixing them both, but I'm now waiting. I'm like, "Okay, um, what's going to happen in a minute's time? Am I going to have to wait a minute now to actually wait for my transition point?" And that's why up until now, I was always saying, "I wish I could just lock the tracks together and push them forward eight or 16 bars together so I can actually hear the transition points." And I manifested this, man. The Record Box must have heard, because now they've got that.

Okay, so now that they've got this new dual player, I don't think I'll ever use two player again. Dual player is the same, but with a lot more features. And what I can do is, let's pretend I'm mixing at the end here, at that point, okay? I get my new song, it's first cue. I can lock those songs together by pushing these, and then I can hit play, okay? And they're both playing together. Then I can jump forward on either of them, and it's going to take them both to the transition point. So, I've got the crossfader in the middle. Let's jump forward, okay? And I'm like, see, that's taking a while. I would realize straight away from that that this cue point needs to be further in. So, I could quickly go and delete that first cue. Maybe go to this point here. See that? Probably be a one in there. Oh, unlock it, of course. Unlock it. Go to that point. See that would be 16 bars in. Look, I can even jump back eight bars to see, eight, 16. And then go, Q, go Memory, put a cue point on that, and let's try that now. Okay, cool. We'll lock them together. Let's jump forward. And even still, maybe it's not enough. If I wanted to be really creative, what I could do is go find this bit. Okay, let's unlock it. Go here. Find that. And let's jump back 16 bars. Eight, 16. Let's go, Q, Memory. We'll delete that first cue. And see now you can see which ones I've set and which which ones they have set. And we're kind of tweaking. They gave us something to start with, but there is some tweaking, probably. Yep. Now, lock that they're together. Jump forward. Okay, this sounding a bit more tighter. Depends how tight you want your mixes. Yeah, making it tight like that, it keeps it, you know. But that's what I can do all on here. If you're, if you're on your gear trying to kind of figure this out, like here, I can just go quickly adjust the cues. I can lock the stems together. I can jump to my transition points. This is a game changer, and this is free. You know, this is people are complaining about, oh, not getting like the stems isn't moving fast enough, man. This is a great start. I really, this has been a wish of mine answered for a long time. It's going to really help the set prep process.

Okay, so just another couple of things. So, that's gives you an insight to it. But you've also got a couple of other features. So, you got the jumping back and forth, you got setting cues on here, cue and memory, which is great. You've actually got the crossfader to go back and forth between. Um, and then you've also got like frequency cut. So, let's say then I'm on here in the middle, just unlock it, hit play, go up here, click on the way. I can take the low out, I can take the mids out, I can take the highs out. Okay. So, let's pretend I'm doing a mix and I want to cut the bass on this old one. Let's say I want to take the bass out of the one coming in. So, this is the one on the top is my song playing, the one on the bottom is my new song. And what I want to do is, well, I have to do, I've only got like one hand, like one cursor here. So, I'm going to have to kind of like swap them out at one point. Okay, let's, um, so I'm going to take the bass out of the old one. I might do it now. So, I'm dropping back for a bit. Let's smash it on the one, bring the low back in. It's like a bass swap. Beautiful. Now, if this had too much personality, color, I could take the mid out, but it kind of kills it. Take the high out, but you get the idea. It is a bit of a kill, but it's all right. Cool. Then, if I want to do like a little loop or something, it could be like, let's see. Okay, see if I had mid there, you'd hear more. Okay, cool. And I could go in. Let's grab another song, drag it up to the top, hit Q. Takes that Q. They're not, they're not locked together. That's good. Let's go mix it on this one. See how it goes. Okay, once I've hit play, I lock them, and then I might jump forward. See how it sounds in a bit? Oh, let's get the crossfader in the middle. Nice. This is working. And then what I could do, the first thing I do is probably cut the low on the exiting one, that's the bottom. Maybe I'll wait for the next one. Cut the low. Okay, I cut the low here. Beautiful. I'm really liking that, actually. Cool.

Okay, so let's say I really like how those tracks sound together. I could then start putting them into a loose order. So, in this case, I want Terra like first in the playlist, and then I'm going to put next in line, it goes by Peggy Gal. Well, if you go and you're trying to move these around and they're not moving, just know that you've got to click above number to order the playlist. So, I've clicked above number, then I drag Terra up to number one, and I start organizing in a playlist.

Now, some people may ask, "Why even bother ordering a playlist? Just like, be connected to the music, just jam." But the truth is, it's kind of fun organizing and finding tracks that like really flow well together with the goal of taking people on a journey and building dance floors and creating, like, not just thinking of your music as something that you know, you play, but using your set kind of like as creating a poem. In like, for instance, so I actually really encourage my students. I give them all these tips on how to build these beautiful playlists. And then when they're finished, post our, they can submit a graduating mix to me. I give them feedback. And to hear their mixes, like, "Oh my God, man, these students are better than me." Like, they're, they're amazing. And it's because they're giving a lot of love and attention. I teach them how to do that with their music. But once they've actually got something they're proud of, I give them feedback on that. And if, you know, I feel it's p, if not, I give them some tips on how to rework it. But once I feel they're club ready, actually give them a graduating certificate saying, "Hey, man, you know, well done." And then from that, within our Club Ready tribe, students can then, well, they're encouraged to share their mixes, like with other DJs, you know, in that group. And I give them tips on how to use those mixes to kind of get shows and how to connect with promoters. But also, we have affiliations with a lot of radio stations within our Club Ready tribe, and there's a lot of opportunities and people that are really like eager to work with my students. So, that's a lot of fun.

So, for you, man, step number one, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Step number one, you know, start building these playlists, find these combinations, put together these works of art. So, it's not just about, okay, doing intro-outro mixing the whole time. It's about using your sets as an opportunity to evoke feeling in your listener, take them on a journey, pull them in. And then see, man, I don't want to just teach how to be a DJ. I want you to be able to be a DJ that connects and unites people. And it's not like, "Oh, wow, that DJ's good, man." It's more like, "Wow." And, you know, it starts here.

Then, once you've got your playlist, then you have two options. If you've got a controller, head across to Performance Mode, which I'm going to do in a second with my controller. Or you can actually just say you've got a standalone or club gear. You can actually then put your USB in. Let me show you that now.

Okay, so I've just put my USB in. Then, down the side here, you can go down, I think there's a little picture, "Display Devices." Do that. That's my device there. So, just let you know, that's where it is. I can go into Device Library, I can see my playlists, they're all there. So, what I'll do is, I'll go back up to here. If that's the playlist I want on there, I just right-click on that playlist, "Export Playlist." No name, not "Export Playlist to a file," no "Create Playlist." No name. It's going to go to my USB. But then a lot of people think that's it, and they pull it out and they wonder why it's not on there. You do have to wait for the playlist to load. So, look at the loading bar at the bottom here, and you just wait it out. And then when that's done, you just eject the device and you're good to go.

But by the way, if you ever want to do it the other way around, and that is get a playlist off your USB and into Record Box, with your USB connected, basically go into Record Box, right-click on the playlist, and select "Import." And then that's going to copy the playlist with all the cues and metadata to the bottom of the playlist section.

Just a couple of other things too, while I'm looking at this side view, down the bottom here too, you have History. History is really cool. Let's say you've played a set, and it's like, and even if you play it on a USB, when you put your USB back in, Record Box actually detects those histories and it saves them to Record Box automatically for you. It's like connecting your phone to your computer, doesn't auto-sync immediately. So, what happens is, let's play. Say I did a really good practice session in May, and let's say I go find it. I'm like, "Oh, that wasn't it. Where was it?" I'm like, "Ah, that's it." Yeah, I love that. What I could do is, I can right-click on that playlist and I can go, "Turn the play history into a playlist." And then what happens is, if you go to your playlist section, go down to the bottom, and there's my imported history. Then I suggest renaming it. So, in this case, something like, you know, "Killer Earth Freak Set." And if you like, you could even make a folder for exported history sets. Saving history sets can be really beneficial, as you can one day find yourself in a position where you're playing live, and the music that you prepared for that particular event or party may not be working or getting the response that you want. Yet, the vibe of that party may remind you of a past set you did. So, if you saved those future history sets to your USB, then had access to those sets that possibly worked in the past, I'm not saying play those exact sets again, but they definitely help you to give you ideas on what's worked before. And no doubt, history sets have got me out of many sticky situations in the past. And it's just good to turn up with shows overprepared with unlimited options. You got to believe something. Why not believe in me?

If you're not sure what to play next, Record Box have now added two new track suggestion options. Now, number one, the Collection Radar, where Record Box will make suggestions on what to play next based on tracks already existing within your music library, some of which you may have long forgotten about. It's really cool. Now, to make these suggestions, they use AI, and it's usually based on a mixture of popularity, genre, BPM, key, and energy. Now, there's only one issue. If you wish to use this feature, you need to reanalyze your entire music library, as this gives Record Box the information needed to make this feature work. So, to analyze your library, go to the Collection, select all, and then right-click on your entire collection and select "Analyze." Now, if you're analyzing your whole library, you can also take advantage of the auto-cue feature and do them both simultaneously. But I suggest you first test the auto-cue feature just to make sure it works properly in a way that you like. And then, if you do like it, you can reanalyze all your tracks for the Collection Radar and also for intelligent cue points at the same time. And post-track analysis, all your tracks will be cued, and the Collection Radar will be working to its full potential.

So, first things first, how do you know which of the loaded tracks the Collection Radar is making suggestions for? So, you can see here it says "Collection Radar," then it says "Master," "A," and it also displays the name of the track selected. Now, Master refers to the master track playing, or you can select A to make suggestions for the track loaded onto deck A, or B is for the track loaded onto deck B. And if you're still unsure, you can actually see the track title here. So, right now, I have "Goes By Peggy Gal" selected, and the streaming radar has suggested all these tracks as compatible matches. So, if I wanted to try one of the matches, I could just drag and drop it into the other deck and just give them a go and see if I like it.

Okay, I'll link it. Let's just cut to the chase. Oh, [ __ ] I might take out the personality top. One to be honest, that kind of similar to the one above. I could definitely use that. Maybe I take out the highs, keep a little bit of bass in because this one hasn't got a lot of bass, actually. Okay, I like that. Okay, so, um, there are different settings for this, the Collection Radar. So, not only which one you're matching to, which we covered. There's the song, so that's what it's matching to right now. Then this section gives you the ability to select tracks with or without vocals, which can be really handy. So, in this case, let's ask Record Box to suggest compatible tracks within 5 BPMs of each other, relative keys, and also let's select instrumental and see what comes up. So, let's try this one. Okay, nice. See, I came in a bit harsh. I can take the highs up. Maybe I'll lock them, move forward eight bars. Let's go. Another one. I'll take out the low of the top one. I love this song. I play this by my Earth Frequency set.

Now, let's say then you want to drag into your playlist. And like, "How do I get that from my collection into my playlist?" And what you can do is, see here, there's a little display horizontal sub-browser window. What I could do is, I could go down here into my playlist, and let's say it's like, okay, this one, because we're messing around with that. And you got your Collection Radar. Then what I can do is, I can drag that into there. And then I'd be like, "Oh, that Zoros song went well with that one." And you do it that way. That's actually really cool. That's a new feature as well. So, if you want to get stuff from track selection into playlist, man, that's gold.

Okay, the second music discovery option is the streaming radar. Now, to use this, it's going to require that you're subscribed and logged into a streaming service. Now, I'm going to talk more about streaming in one second, so stick around. But let's say you are subscribed to a service, then Record Box is going to suggest tracks from those streaming services using AI. So, for instance, let's say you have a track loaded, Record Box is going to suggest tracks from all the streaming services that you're subscribed to, based off popularity, similar searches from other DJs, what people are buying, plus all the staples for track selection, like genre, key, BPM, and mood. Now, you're going to notice the suggestions near the top are quite often more popular, as the ones as you go further down. So, the more underground, the further down you go.

Now, personally, I love this. Okay? Is recently I moved up to the Northern Rivers from Sydney, and what I'm finding with the DJ scene in the Northern Rivers is it's a lot more underground and way less commercial than in Sydney. So, one of the biggest challenges has been trying to find the right kind of music to fit in up here. And to be honest, it's been great, actually. But let's say then I was playing at a festival recently, and there's some certain tracks that I saw went really, really well. So, I'm like, "Okay, I just need a lot of songs like that." What I could do is, I could put that song in here, see what the streaming radar is kind of suggesting. And again.

If I want more underground, just scroll further down. Okay, so let's have a quick look at it now. So firstly, make sure you've got a track loaded in our player. Go to streaming radar, okay? And then make sure that it's reading it from the player. So say I hit Master here and you're there like, "Where is it? What's going on?" Well, at the moment, I think it's just just in deck A there. So I just hit deck A. I can see now that's the song it's making suggestions based on. And these are the ones. So, to be honest, I haven't really heard of any of these. So what I could do is I could test it. I could just go drag the song into the other player, okay? Wait for it to load, okay? Now let's go do a mix. How about I go from, you know, this point? Why not? Cool. It's loaded. May I could lock them together and jump forward? Maybe I'm just looping that top one to stop it coming back in. I know the song well. If I get impatient, I could jump forward and you see how it's got all these cue points on it. I've never loaded this song before. The reason those cues are there is that's that auto cue feature. As soon as I've loaded it, it's going to put a whole bunch of cues on there for me, which is cool. Okay, to be honest, not the greatest transition ever, but the song sounds kind of cool. Let's have a listen. Maybe I'll unlock him here. I'll stop the top one. Let's go have a listen. To be honest, I like that. So let's say I like that and want to add it to my playlist. I know I already covered this, but you just go up here to this little button here. Display horizontal. And then what I could do is I'd go and find a playlist that I'm working on right now. Let's pretend it's just this first mix one, and I can just drag that across into that playlist and start building that playlist. And you can see that come from a streaming site because it's got the little B there, okay? So it's a beatport track, okay? You can close this down when you want and you can just go and try more and more songs. I actually really rate this feature. I think it's really cool. The thing that a lot of people ask about streaming music is, let's say you find a track that you like, can you add it to your playlist and set cue points and will rekordbox remember those changes every single time you load the song, even if you close rekordbox and log off? And the answer is yes. You can drag tracks from the streaming radar or your streaming services into playlists. You can then set cue points and as long as you're connected to the internet and you're also using your computer to load your tracks onto the gear, you can play the tracks without any kind of issues. I guess the only downside is you can't export stream tracks to your USB sticks and you also can't record stream tracks using your DJ software's internal recording features. Now, there are ways around that, but that's another video. So personally, I love streaming sites for the music discovery aspect, but when I find tracks I love and I want to include them in my live sets, I buy them. As I feel building your physical music library is a really important practice for DJs. But here's the thing, is it worth signing up for a streaming service just for this? So let's talk about the streaming services. I guess the biggest issue is they can be expensive. Now, I did a video a while back called "Are DJ Streaming Sites Worth It?" So I'll link that in now and check it out. And if you're already a Club Ready student, you're going to notice there's a ton of material about streaming in the course. But just quickly, there are pros and cons of streaming. Now, big pro is music discovery. You can search from within your DJ software, which means you have access to unlimited tracks as long as you're connected to the internet. Now, the new streaming section on here had an epic visual overhaul and now looks super sleek. So first, select the streaming services you are subscribed to. In this case, let's look at Beatport Link. And then you can either search the entire Beatport library for specific tracks using the search bar, or you can dive into the top 100 of any genre. So click the genre you like and you can view the top 100 tracks, or you can even scroll down. They have curated playlists to allow you to dive even deeper with your music discovery. So if you wish to preview a track, you can click on the album art and a mini player will come up, which loads really quickly, which is, you know, really cool. And if you like a track, you can then drag it into your player. Now, you'll notice there is a little buffering time when loading tracks onto your player, and in truth, that's the main thing that's going to test your patience when it comes to using streaming services. And the only way around that is to upgrade your subscription to a professional plan, which includes an offline locker where you can drag up to 1,000 tracks, which means instant loading after that initial buffer. And you can also access those tracks from your offline locker without an internet connection, which can be great when playing remotely. Another thing to note is you can only access Beatport Link in export mode. So if you want to access Beatsource, Tidal, or SoundCloud, you have to switch across to performance mode. Now, Beatsource really is amazing if you're playing parties and functions, as it has a huge back catalog of all the classics that people may request quite often. Right, students contact me asking where they can download like old pop songs and rock songs. And the truth is, right, you can't find a lot of these golden oldies on most of the modern DJ pools like Beatport or BPM Supreme. But Beatsource has it all. So for instance, I could type in The Bee Gees or even Nana, okay? And I'm going to get options. Plus, in Beatsource, you have charts of all the big downloads for the main genres. So for instance, let's say I'm not up to date with the latest dance chart. I'm playing a party and people are starting to request dance music. Well, then I can go to the dance chart in Beatsource and it's suggesting all the biggest mainstream dance tracks right now that would be most suitable for diverse crowds that perhaps have had a few drinks and they want to dance to tracks that they know and that they've heard on the radio, like tracks that are familiar to them that are big right now. Again, if you find tracks that you like, you can drag them into your offline locker for instant loading or to play when you're not connected to the internet, or you can also drag them into your own playlist, and they will appear as long as you are connected to the internet and your subscription is valid. Now, if you're only prepping your music to export onto a USB, all you ever need is export mode. Like I pretty much gravitate around export mode all the time on rekordbox. But let's say you've got a controller. Once you have prepped some playlists, you can jump across to performance mode to perform them. Now, I can load tracks using my rotary selector and once I select a track that I like, it's going to appear on the screen. Now, personally, I would hide the mixer section as you don't need to see this. And depending on what kind of controller you have and which effects are visible on your actual hardware, you may even hide the effects rack just to reduce some of the clutter on screen. Also, if you wish to use stems, go to settings, extensions, and turn on the enable stem switch. Now, I have a whole mini course on upping your DJ game using stems in my Club Ready DJ course. But for now, okay, this video is already getting kind of long and it is more focused on the rekordbox software side of things and not so much gear related, and you know, actually how to DJ. So if you are new to DJing and feel it all lost, you won't regret trusting me to be your tutor. I've helped thousands of people worldwide learn how to DJ and I'm receiving rave reviews every single day from students expressing gratitude and they're sharing their success stories and just basically how Club Ready DJ courses help them to achieve all their DJ goals. And to hear how people are resonating deeply with my teaching style, it does warm my heart as I've put a lot of effort and work into my course. It is my baby. And if you buy it and let's say you don't agree, man, I'll give you all your money back. There's a one-year full money-back guarantee, no questions asked. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this content. Um, you know, it was made with a lot of heart. I really wanted to create a video that complete beginners could hop on to. Cuz I know a lot of beginners and let's say a lot of people right now are doing this like, you know, rekordbox and they're just highlighting all the upgrades. But if a beginner hops on and then that means what they look at the upgrades and they've got to go back and get walkthroughs. So this video is designed to have one video highlighting the upgrades, of course, but then how to use them so you can hop onto rekordbox, have a complete guide, and hit the ground running with the latest version of rekordbox. So hopefully that's helpful. Anyway, I'll do another follow-up video in 30 days' time on my overall opinions on the new rekordbox features and I'm going to let you know if I decide to upgrade to a paid plan and if I do, which plan I upgrade if I do it all. So anyway, for now, the most important thing for you is to get started and then basically I reckon set a goal. And that means, you know, maybe your goal would be, okay, I'm going to craft a really cool playlist using the new rekordbox features again, okay? And then, you know, you can work on that and then have something to share with your friends or even to play live. Anyway, we'll speak soon. Please sub to pay it forward and track some good vibes and, um, you know, I'll keep the content rolling for you. Cheers.