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

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.

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

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 to start my curation of 13. This seems apt in being similar to the sequential serialisation of podcasts.

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 for updating its view.