I wanted to take a few minutes to show you how to sync Beatport Pro with Traktor so that you guys can get up and running with this latest music organisation tool.
Seamless Meta Data Sync
I was pleasantly surprised at how simple it was to tag tracks and export the Beatport Pro collection to integrate with Traktor. I was not expecting the syncing to be live and seamless, however once you have exported your collection once from Beatport Pro, you don’t have to do it again. This was my key concern when I heard about the announcement from Beatport.
Syncing Made Easy
Upon install Beatport Pro gives you the option of importing your tracks from iTunes or from another location on your hard drive.
Once you have imported your collection it asks you if you would like to import any meta tags that you have already created inside your existing collection. For instance, if you have already spent painstaking hours updating your comment fields with your own information, you can import this to the Beatport collection too.
You can decide what items you would like to import based on familiar style requests as seen in iTunes smart playlists.
In the Beatport preferences you can head to the ‘Export’ window where you only have to name and export your library once, causing it to automatically update this file each time you adjust anything in Beatport Pro.
Setting up Traktor to import the Beatport Library
Once you have exported the Beatport Pro Library, open up Traktor and head to the preferences > File Management. Once there select the iTunes option and navigate to the Beatport xml file that you just saved.
Then simply right click the ‘iTunes’ library icon in Traktor, followed by ‘Refresh’. This will refresh the library and you will be able to see all the new tags and any playlists that you have set up in Beatport Pro.
Will Beatport take over from iTunes?
It seems that this new offering from Beatport is a very slick way to organize your tracks. Whilst it is still a 3rd party software, which could potentially lead to software compatibility issues, it might be a better alternative to iTunes. As this is still very new it remains to be seen how Beatport Pro will be adopted. Let me know if you have tested it out and what your thoughts are, I plan to use it more over the coming weeks as I am very interested in the tagging aspect. I do however wish there was a better way to search for tags only in Traktor.
It will be interesting to see what Traktor’s response is to this amazing new offering from Beatport.
Traktor Tips 
I use beatport pro to manage and tag my tracks. Then I use the .xml route and/or the right click ‘save metadata to file’ to update my tracks directly, which is reflected in Traktor pro after consistency check.
It works just fine but one thing bothers me like .. a lot. Traktor pro is very limited in showing tags (like unable to show mood, energy and such in the Traktor browser). Beatport offers to translate these kind of tags to the comments.. but I already have stuff in there..
does anyone know of a way to kind of ‘remap’ tags or preferable just show the tags I want in Traktor pro 3? I hav now resorted to using the tracknumber to reflect ‘energy level’ but it will take forever to update my tags in this way..
So nice option but.. the compatibility in tagsystems.. should be better.
Hi guys, I have well integrate my Beatport Pro playlist into Traktor. But I don’t know why, the cover art do not appear in the browser section.
Is there a way to fix that?
I am assuming that the artwork is not supposed to appear. The reason I say this is because traktor is using the same kind of file for beatport as it does with iTunes. This means the artwork is not displayed. Artwork is only displayed via the Traktor collection.
Hello i found a way to create playlist that works with itunes, just drag from beatport pro and drag in the itunes playlist.
thanks for sharing – will test this out
*drop
Hi!
Playlists and playlist folders (which are created in Beatport app) are showing in Traktor?
well said, this seems like a huge flaw in my opinion. I understand that beatport uses the date you imported the tracks into beatport and not the date that already exists. Perhaps this is something that Beatport will need to change in the function of the software!
I hope they will change this or implement a switch and you can choice before the import which date want to use (keep / not keep the original dates).
I wonder if this might work for me or if it would be a waste of time since I refuse to utilize “iRuins” for anything after it began randomly deleting music that I used in Traktor & Traktor Pro and I now have my collection as far away from “iRuins” as possible and set up via playlists….Opinions?
I have started to use this mainly for ID tagging for key etc and the sync button works great for that. I like to separate my main iTunes library from my house/dance music for a while now so I will give it a go until something amazing comes along
I have used two separate iTunes libraries for this task. Works great.
Start using this to better manage my house music and like it so far. Up till now have been using Traktor to manage play lists etc and not using iTunes integration. One thing I have noticed though is that when I load some songs in Traktor that were not imported into Beatport Pro, (and this does not seem to happen all the time) Beatport Pro gets updated showing this new track. Not sure I understand the mechanism of how Traktor uses the XML file. Seems like it passes information back to it? I take it that its a 2-way street some how?
Cool – thanks for your feedback!
As much as I like the idea of this.. After playing with it for awhile I’m left with the opinion that the only way this would work was if both itunes and beatport pro could use the same xml file and seamlessly reflect the changes that either made.. Either that or for each of the major softwares to implement a new beatport pro option that lived alongside itunes.. This I think would be more ideal because often times I just want to listen to music that has nothing to do with my DJ collection and sometimes vice versa.. This would allow me to finally separate my work stuff from my recreational stuff and only open or mess with itunes when I wanted to play stuff to relax. I have a feeling the first option might work and is how they are envisioning people would work with it.. But I’m not certain it will with one or the other open at the same time.. I’ve recently gotten my collection mostly under control though so I’m timid to do something that will destroy any part of the library I’ve literally taken months to get sorted thus far.
I hear you on this. Even with separated libraries as you suggest, you’re still stuck with the possibility of duplicates in the Traktor Collection (if you have the same tunes in beatport pro as in itunes). It will be interesting to see what NI do with this now. Maybe they will just fine tune their existing library functions.
I tried to follow exactly these instructions and was very hopeful, but already see two issues:
– After changing the location of the iTunes library XML, Traktor seems unable to load the library completely;
– Even if that worked, it would leave the issue of Traktor’s analyzed BPM/Key not showing up in these lists unresolved.
You don’t need to change the location of the iTunes Library, leave that file alone! You simply create a separate library from Beatport and then point Traktor to that one. You can always change it back so Traktor points to the original library.
There are some settings in Beatport with regards the keys. You can either use the keys you’ve already created, but then they are read in meta data, not by Traktor – if you want Traktors colour function to work, the tracks must be analysed for key inside of traktor!
It’s not gonna be the right solution for everyone! Thanks for posting!
Yep yep, that’s what I did: create a new “iTunes library XML” from Beatport Pro. Once I point Traktor to that file, Traktor is not able to load the iTunes playlists anymore.
Sorry – not sure why you’re set up would be any different!?
I have Traktor Pro 2.6.8 (R382) on a Macbook Pro Retina 15″
i did my test with 2.6.7 – i will test again with 2.6.8 soon.
This is what happens when I try to open/expand the iTunes folder in Traktor, after I changed the location to become the XML generated by Beatport!