Showing posts with label index. Show all posts
Showing posts with label index. Show all posts
Thursday, 4 September 2025
How to label DJ mixes in Apple Music and organise them into a playlist - an Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival exemplar
Written for Apple Music users interested in better curating their favourite DJ mixes under one playlist.
Bedroom DJ TraVice here- poorly tagged music files are a pet peeve of mine. I like 'em well-tagged for easy selection. Hopefully this post suggests the value of doing this with the example of a proper playlists creation from Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival's downloads: This Facebook community is dedicated to the 'past, present and future of the atmospheric genre’s sound', as championed by its pioneers LTJ Bukem & DJ Fabio from the early 1990’s. Building on facebook.com/share/g/16JMzzdxzA, this group’s leadership launched a mix series to showcase its community’s DJ mixing talent in 2023. At the time of writing, 20 mixes are available to stream off Soundcloud at soundcloud.com/atmosphericdrumandbass, with 13 offered for free downloaded (see example in Figure 1).
In Apple Music a new playlist is simply created by pressing Apple and N at the same time. After downloading the mixes, they can be placed in a playlist by dragging them there from Songs, or simply right clicking on the mix and selecting <Add to playlist>, then choosing ’ Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival’.
While playlists can be ordered any number of ways for viewing via <Viewing Options>, I like to use the filenames to clearly indicate the order of release (01 - 13). They must also clearly indicate the series they are from through a consistently applied title (yes, the exact same one for readily displaying the entire series in searches!).
With all 13 mixes in the playlist (see Figure 2), it’s now time to improve the labelling of each mix. To improve on Figure 3’s example below, I must enter labels into DJ Illesta’s mix’s fields.
There's much that can be added- artist, album, album artist composer, year, rating, bpm and comments. The extent of which depends on your interest(s). Likewise some labelling choices will be fairly subjective. Take genre for example, I use “drum and bass”, because most of this genre in my library defaults to the softer atmospheric style. However, aficionados of the hard jungle style may choose that to be their default. They may also prefer using DnB or drum & bass, while I use “drum and bass - hardstep” for grittier tracks/mixes.
It’s also important to appreciate that Apple Music’s labelling/tagging system is not designed around labelling DJ mix-sets. This is a meta-problem, since DJs are musicians whose medium is often a blend of other musical artists’ production and sounds. Apple Music’s labelling is understandably geared to the latter’s conventional works. It would struggle to cope with the "meta-mentalness" of a DJ doing a continuous remix of another DJs productions and remixes- for example, try labelling the producer DJ Lenzman’s 2020 mix of DJ Redeyes' tracks!
With an academic hat on, this challenge suggests the multimodal difficulty of labelling DJ’s music work via Apple Music (and iTunes)'s textual labels. Its indexing system caters to original musicians/composers, versus producers, remixers and DJs. For example, there is no dedicated option for adding a DJs setlist. Instead one can appropriate <Comments> (for very short set-lists) or <Custom Lyrics> (for more typical ones, eg. over thirty minutes). Since Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival provides setlists for each mix, these are easy enough to copy-and-paste as “Custom Lyrics”- see Figure 4.
Since there is no <DJ> identifier, I often add DJ before an artist's name. This makes it easier to select from DJs under the Artists view, depending on one’s mood… Also for a mix of one artist’s work by another DJ (such as Sasha’s “Voyage of Ima” remix of producer BT’s album), it seems apt to use “Composer” to reflect the DJ’s role. {That said, for popular/mainstream DJs, I do lose the DJ to ensure Apple Music manages them by their artist name}.
Figure 5 shows what the completed details page looks like- much better than Figure 2's starting point!
Working to update the labels of many files is a schlep, so speed things up by creating a cut-and-paste file. This also helps ensure consistency across labelling.
My txt file simply contained the:
Album title format
0# Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival Mix Series - DJ
Album
0# Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival Mix Series
Grouping
Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival Mix Series
Date
In each song, I set the track number to be 1 of 1 to reflect an entire DJ's mix. In contrast, the disc number follows the Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival mix series' order, e.g. disc number of 1 and 13 to start. This seems apt in being similar to a podcasts' serialisation.
N.B. As you work to add information to each "song" please note that these updates do not automatically reflect in your Apple Music playlist’s display. So, click to another list, then return to yours to update its view.
And here’s Figure 6's end result- an Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival playlist with all mixes extensively labelled, and with album covers added.
Bedroom DJ TraVice here- poorly tagged music files are a pet peeve of mine. I like 'em well-tagged for easy selection. Hopefully this post suggests the value of doing this with the example of a proper playlists creation from Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival's downloads: This Facebook community is dedicated to the 'past, present and future of the atmospheric genre’s sound', as championed by its pioneers LTJ Bukem & DJ Fabio from the early 1990’s. Building on facebook.com/share/g/16JMzzdxzA, this group’s leadership launched a mix series to showcase its community’s DJ mixing talent in 2023. At the time of writing, 20 mixes are available to stream off Soundcloud at soundcloud.com/atmosphericdrumandbass, with 13 offered for free downloaded (see example in Figure 1).
 |
| Figure 1. Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival soundcloud download selection |
In Apple Music a new playlist is simply created by pressing Apple and N at the same time. After downloading the mixes, they can be placed in a playlist by dragging them there from Songs, or simply right clicking on the mix and selecting <Add to playlist>, then choosing ’ Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival’.
 |
| Figure 2. Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival mixes playlist in Apple Music |
With all 13 mixes in the playlist (see Figure 2), it’s now time to improve the labelling of each mix. To improve on Figure 3’s example below, I must enter labels into DJ Illesta’s mix’s fields.
 |
| Figure 3. DJ Illesta Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival 1 Apple Music info's starting point |
There's much that can be added- artist, album, album artist composer, year, rating, bpm and comments. The extent of which depends on your interest(s). Likewise some labelling choices will be fairly subjective. Take genre for example, I use “drum and bass”, because most of this genre in my library defaults to the softer atmospheric style. However, aficionados of the hard jungle style may choose that to be their default. They may also prefer using DnB or drum & bass, while I use “drum and bass - hardstep” for grittier tracks/mixes.
It’s also important to appreciate that Apple Music’s labelling/tagging system is not designed around labelling DJ mix-sets. This is a meta-problem, since DJs are musicians whose medium is often a blend of other musical artists’ production and sounds. Apple Music’s labelling is understandably geared to the latter’s conventional works. It would struggle to cope with the "meta-mentalness" of a DJ doing a continuous remix of another DJs productions and remixes- for example, try labelling the producer DJ Lenzman’s 2020 mix of DJ Redeyes' tracks!
With an academic hat on, this challenge suggests the multimodal difficulty of labelling DJ’s music work via Apple Music (and iTunes)'s textual labels. Its indexing system caters to original musicians/composers, versus producers, remixers and DJs. For example, there is no dedicated option for adding a DJs setlist. Instead one can appropriate <Comments> (for very short set-lists) or <Custom Lyrics> (for more typical ones, eg. over thirty minutes). Since Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival provides setlists for each mix, these are easy enough to copy-and-paste as “Custom Lyrics”- see Figure 4.
 |
| Figure 4. DJ Illesta Atmospheric Drum & Bass Apple Music track listing in lyrics |
Since there is no <DJ> identifier, I often add DJ before an artist's name. This makes it easier to select from DJs under the Artists view, depending on one’s mood… Also for a mix of one artist’s work by another DJ (such as Sasha’s “Voyage of Ima” remix of producer BT’s album), it seems apt to use “Composer” to reflect the DJ’s role. {That said, for popular/mainstream DJs, I do lose the DJ to ensure Apple Music manages them by their artist name}.
Figure 5 shows what the completed details page looks like- much better than Figure 2's starting point!
 |
| Figure 5. DJ Illesta Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival 1 Apple Music info complete + cover |
Working to update the labels of many files is a schlep, so speed things up by creating a cut-and-paste file. This also helps ensure consistency across labelling.
My txt file simply contained the:
Album title format
0# Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival Mix Series - DJ
Album
0# Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival Mix Series
Grouping
Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival Mix Series
Date
2022 2023 2024 2025
Track
1
Track
1
Disc number
13
In each song, I set the track number to be 1 of 1 to reflect an entire DJ's mix. In contrast, the disc number follows the Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival mix series' order, e.g. disc number of 1 and 13 to start. This seems apt in being similar to a podcasts' serialisation.
N.B. As you work to add information to each "song" please note that these updates do not automatically reflect in your Apple Music playlist’s display. So, click to another list, then return to yours to update its view.
And here’s Figure 6's end result- an Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival playlist with all mixes extensively labelled, and with album covers added.
 |
| Figure 6. Atmospheric Drum & Bass Revival Mix Series playlist with full information |
Nice one, selecta DJ TraVice! Your drum-n-bass playlist is now optimally prepared to rinse out...
Fellow trainspotters welcome to rant-&-RAVE in the moderated comments below 👇
Fellow trainspotters welcome to rant-&-RAVE in the moderated comments below 👇
Saturday, 7 January 2012
Developing a qualitative research coding index for first-year, university students' ICT practices
This post was written for researchers interested in the background to the fourth phase of the ICT Access and Use qualitative research project's coding process.
The fourth phase of the IDRC-funded Centre for Educational Technology's ICT Access and Use project uses digital ethnographies to understand how twenty six, first-year students at four South African Universities used Information Communication Technology (ICT) for study and leisure purposes last year.
This research phase saw four researchers at the universities of Cape Town, Rhodes, Orange Free State and Fort Hare prepare eight sets data:
Preparing this coding followed these eight steps:
1 Kelsey and I reviewed the project's documents and transcribed key points from student interviews;
2 I illustrated these points on two large cyan posters with yellow stickies (these were very useful for re-grouping concepts on the board);
3 These points were reviewed internally and presented externally to the universities' researchers and their most engaged students;
4 Kelsey and I separated the points that were to be used for classification or coding;
5 Kelsey developed a numeric index in creating the Google document: "Past ICT Use 1". I followed this index in developing "Current ICT Use 2" and "Future ICT Use 3";
6 We reviewed these documents internally and revised them;
7 I then added these codes to the NVivo research project file and am now using them to code student interviews;
8 As I apply these codes using node shortcuts, I am also updating the "ICT Use" documents with new codes to describe ideas that may prove useful for querying later.
Below is an example of how these codings have been added to a video in the research project file:
I trust this post enables you understand the coding process we followed?
If you have a question, suggestion or other feedback, please type it as a comment below.
The fourth phase of the IDRC-funded Centre for Educational Technology's ICT Access and Use project uses digital ethnographies to understand how twenty six, first-year students at four South African Universities used Information Communication Technology (ICT) for study and leisure purposes last year.
This research phase saw four researchers at the universities of Cape Town, Rhodes, Orange Free State and Fort Hare prepare eight sets data:
- A series of interview videos between the university's researcher and his or her subjects;
- Videos of focus groups;
- Videos of ICT use at home;
- Videos of formal and informal mobile phone video use;
- Videos of social media and internet use;
- Videos University software use (such as learning management systems)
- Screengrabs of Facebook use;
- and documents of the researchers' reflections.
Preparing this coding followed these eight steps:
1 Kelsey and I reviewed the project's documents and transcribed key points from student interviews;
2 I illustrated these points on two large cyan posters with yellow stickies (these were very useful for re-grouping concepts on the board);
 |
| ICT Access and Use phase four coding poster (9 January, 2012). |
4 Kelsey and I separated the points that were to be used for classification or coding;
5 Kelsey developed a numeric index in creating the Google document: "Past ICT Use 1". I followed this index in developing "Current ICT Use 2" and "Future ICT Use 3";
6 We reviewed these documents internally and revised them;
7 I then added these codes to the NVivo research project file and am now using them to code student interviews;
8 As I apply these codes using node shortcuts, I am also updating the "ICT Use" documents with new codes to describe ideas that may prove useful for querying later.
Below is an example of how these codings have been added to a video in the research project file:
 |
| Screengrab of coding for Ace's first interview in NVivo 9. (9 January, 2012). |
If you have a question, suggestion or other feedback, please type it as a comment below.
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