Crates

Serato DJ uses digital "crates" for quick access to your favorite collections. There is an almost infinite amount to the number of crates you can create, and any given track can be placed in multiple crates.

For example, you could organize your tracks into the following crates, where any one track would be filed in more than one crate.

• Hip Hop
• French Hip Hop
• UK Hip Hop
• Instrumental Hip Hop
• Old School Hip Hop
• Hip Hop LPs

To make a new crate, click the Add Crate button. 

 To rename a crate, double click the crate name. To delete a crate, highlight the crate and hold control (Windows) or command (macOS), then press delete on your keyboard.

You can change the order of tracks within a crate by dragging them up or down.

TIP: The protect library option in the setup screen applies to removing, editing and renaming crates. Check this option to prevent changes to your crates.

Subcrates

You can drag and drop crates into other crates to make subcrates. If you drag a crate to the very left of the crate panel, it will stay in the top level of the crate structure. If you drag the crate a little to the right, onto the name of another crate, it will make the crate you are dragging a sub crate of this crate.

Subcrates can be opened and collapsed, allowing you to have a large number of crates whilst making them easy to browse.

Smart crates can also be organised as subcrates.

TIP: The include subcrate tracks option in the setup screen will display in the parent crate all tracks contained in its subcrates. Sub smart crates are an exception to this option, and do not add to the parent crate, nor draw from it.

SEE INCLUDE SUBCRATE FOR MORE INFORMATION

Smart Crates

Smart crates are crates which update their contents by using keywords which are matched with selected tags of your music library tracks. Smart crates can be updated automatically or at your discretion.

To create a smart crate, click the Add Smart Crate button in the left hand side of the main screen.

A popup window will open which allows you to add the rules to fill your smart crate. Click Add Rule to add a rule for the smart crate to match with. For each rule you can choose a field to match on from the drop down menu:

• Added (date)
• Album
• Artist
• BPM
• Comment
• Composer
• DJ Playcount
• Filename
• Genre
• Grouping
• Key
• Label
• Rating
• Rating Emoji
• Remixer
• Song
• Whitelabel
• Year
   

Check the Match all of the following Rules option so that tracks must match all the set rules to be added to the crate. If this option is not checked, any track which matches any of the rules will be added to the crate.

Click to save your crate or Cancel to exit without saving.

Click the button (next to the add Smart Crate button) to edit the rules of an existing Smart Crate.

Favorite Crates

In Serato DJ 4.0 Favorite Crates are a shortcut to an existing Crate or Smart Crate, created by right-clicking and selecting “Add To Favorites” The favourited crate should then show at the top of the Crate List.

To Remove a Crate from favourites, right click the favourited track and select ‘Remove from Favorites’

To jump to the Original Crate, right click the favourited crate and select “Show Original Crate”

Crate Search

Crate Search lets you quickly filter and find crates by name, without disrupting your current selection 

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON CRATE SEARCH CLICK HERE 

Show Track in Crates

Show Track in Crates lets you quickly see which Crates or Playlists contain a specific track in your library, making it easy to locate and manage your tracks within your Crates and Playlists.

Right-click on a track and select “Show in Crates” (note: this only works with one track at a time). 

The Crate Panel will filter to display only the Crates and Playlists that include the track you have selected, expanding to any Subcrates if required. (note: In this view, you cannot rearrange or create Crates, and the “Add Crate” button is hidden.)

To exit, click the “X” in the panel header or press Escape and your Crate panel will return to its previous state.

Streaming Tracks in Crates

In Serato DJ 4.0, you can add streaming tracks to crates by clicking and dragging them to the Crate of your choice.

They will stay in a crate unless removed. Streaming tracks only appear if you’re logged into the streaming provider and have ‘Show Streaming Services’ enabled (see streaming tracks for more information)

Remove streaming tracks from Crates by pressing CMD + Delete. 

If you lose internet, streaming tracks that are stored in Crates will be greyed out (except for Beatport/Beatsource offline tracks, which remain available). Tracks will reappear once your connection is restored. If you start Serato DJ offline, streaming tracks will not show until you reconnect to the internet.

NOTE: This is not possible for Spotify Streaming tracks.

Crate Sort

In Serato DJ 4.0, Crates can be sorted by the following columns:

• Custom: Drag and drop crates or subcrates into any order you like.
• Alphabetical: Crates and subcrates are sorted A–Z or Z–A. You can’t reorder within the same parent, but you can move subcrates to different parents.
• Date Added: Crates and subcrates are sorted by creation date (oldest to newest or vice versa). If dates match, custom order is used. No manual reordering within the same parent, but subcrates can be moved to different parents.

Click the sort label to choose a sort type; use the arrow to toggle between ascending and descending order.

NOTE: Favourite Crates always stay at the top regardless of how to sort your crates and renaming a crate only changes its position in Alphabetical sort.

Crate Information Display

Serato DJ 4.0 allows you to view information about the Crate that is currently selected. This information is displayed in the bottom left hand corner of the software. The information displayed for the currently selected Crate is: 

1. Number of tracks in the crate

2. Total playback time of the sum of all tracks in the crate

3. Total size of the sum of all tracks in the crate

4. Number of tracks in the crate that are not analyzed

The crate information updates, as you update the tracks in the crate. If the crate is empty, the crate information will not display.

Crate Color

The Crate Color feature allows you to easily organize your Regular and Smart Crates by assigning them custom colors. To change the color of your Crates simply right-click on any crate in your Crate List and select ‘Select Crate Color’ from the context menu.

This makes it easy to quickly identify and personalize your crates, helping you keep your library organized and tailored to your workflow.