The Case For Crate Hackers

So, there seems to be a little controversy on the use of Crate Hackers as a tool in your DJ’s arsenal. Honestly I am not sure why. Am I a firm believer in knowing your catalog? Absolutely (I even have a post/video for iet). But a tool like this can help to expand that knowledge, can help to ingest new song ideas quickly, and is just a great item to have at your disposal.

My Create Hackers Workflow

So let’s dive into how I have been using Crate Hackers in my workflow.

• I use a couple pools including Late Night Record Pool, Heavy Hits and DMS. These pools generally have the songs I am looking for. In addition Late Night Record pool has an integration in Crate Hackers that deposits your songs into a specific folder.
• Most of my clients will send me a Spotify list or two of some sorts. I will sync that list in Crate Hackers and dump them into an “ideas” playlist in Virtual DJ (or a crate in Serato).

What I Don’t Use Crate Hackers For

What I use is just a smidgen of Crate Hacker’s Capabilities. But with all honesty I don’t use some of the other popular features of the app. To me they either are not the right fit or even outright risky.

• Mix-Ready Crates: I find the majority of the submissions to be odd. Either they don’t quite follow the genre they say.
• Stems Matcher: Just haven’t seen a need for this. I already generally know what key my songs are in if I am going to go into a STEMS remix.
• Folder Flatner. This, to me, is way too risky to use. I made an article well before Crate Hackers came out talking about the dangers of doing automatic deduplication.

A Great Tool For The DJ

Crate Hackers is a platform that is always putting in effort to make themselves even better. While I only use it in a limited capacity, it’s still an awesome tool to have at my disposal.