How to · Traktor

Tag tracks by genre in Traktor.

Traktor already groups your music by genre: expand the Track Collection folder in the Browser Tree and it sorts into Artist, Release, Label and Genre, so every genre string in your tags is a browsable list. The work is upstream, in the tags themselves, so clean the Genre field first with inline editing or the Edit dialog, then turn the genres you actually play into Smartlists that keep filling themselves.

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Tag tracks by genre in Traktor, step by step.

Traktor stores genre as a plain metadata field on every track and builds a lot of its browsing around it. Here is how to organize Traktor by genre, from a clean Genre column to genre Smartlists that stay current on their own.

01

Show and sort the Genre column

Open the Browser and look at the column header row above the Track List. Right-click it to tick Genre on, and drag the column left so it sits near Title and Artist. Click the Genre header once to sort the list by genre, and a second time to invert the order. Clicking the # column header puts the list back into its original track order.

02

Turn on inline editing and fix the obvious mistakes

Open Preferences and go to the Browser Details page, then check Allow Inline Editing in List Window. Back in the Track List, select a track and click into its Genre field until a cursor appears, then type the genre you want. Press Enter to confirm your entry, or Esc to abort. Work down the column and clear out the stray spellings and the empty fields.

03

Retag a batch with the Edit dialog

Select every track that belongs to one genre, right-click, and choose Edit. The Track List turns into the Edit dialog. A checked box beside a field means the selected tracks share that value, and anything you write there is saved to their metadata tags on apply. Use the drop-down in the Genre field to pick a tag already stored in your Collection, then click Apply or OK.

04

Browse the Genre node under Track Collection

Expand the Track Collection folder in the Browser Tree. Everything you have imported is sorted automatically by Artist, Release, Label and Genre, so the Genre node is a live index of every genre string in your collection. Click one to see its tracks. Misspellings and near-duplicates show up here as separate entries, which makes this the fastest place to spot tags that still need work.

05

Build a genre Smartlist

Right-click the Playlists folder and choose Create Smartlist. In the Smartlist window, pick Genre from the filter list and set the value, then add BPM or Rating conditions if you want something tighter than the whole genre. The list fills itself as you import new music. A Smartlist cannot be ordered by hand, so right-click it and choose Save As Playlist when running order matters.

06

Nest the genre lists in folders and pin them to Favorites

Right-click the Playlists folder and select Create Folder, then nest your genre lists by night, room, or tempo band so the tree stays readable. Drag any folder or playlist from the Browser Tree onto a free slot in the Favorites area at the top of the Browser. One click then gets you to a genre mid-set instead of scrolling the tree.

The catch

Sorting a playlist by the Genre column is a view, not a saved order. After you restart Traktor, playlists reset to their original track order unless you right-click the playlist and choose Consolidate. And genre only ever groups tracks as coarsely as your tags do: a folder called House still holds the 11pm warm-up record and the 2am peak-time weapon side by side.

Mood

Euphoric

Melancholic

Mysterious

Energy

Aggressive

Peaceful

Rave

Function

Afterhours

Club

Home

The faster way

Keep the genres you have, then tag for what you actually reach for.

Vibes reads your Traktor collection with the Import Wizard, and Smart Import detects the app for you. Your existing tags come across from the Genre, Mood, and Grouping fields, so nothing gets retyped. From there you tag by feel in Vibe Sort with single key presses, or let Auto-Tagging suggest vibes from the audio, and Combinations turn tag overlaps into ready-made lists. Export writes the result back into Traktor as playlists.

See how it works

Smart Import detects your Traktor collection and brings the library in as it stands

Tag import lifts what is already in your Genre, Mood, and Grouping fields into vibes

Vibe Sort tags by hotkey, and Auto-Tagging suggests the rest from the audio itself

Export sends the finished vibes back to Traktor as playlists you can browse in the booth

Organize in Vibes, export to Traktor.

Your playlists, tags, ratings, and cue points travel back to the gear you play on, so nothing you do in Vibes is locked away.

Frequently asked questions

The honest answers, including the trade-offs.

Yes. Native Instruments sells Traktor Pro 4 as professional four-deck DJ software, says it is the go-to software for hundreds of thousands of DJs, and builds it to run against club-standard mixers, turntables, and CDJs as well as its own controllers. Whether it suits your workflow matters more than who else is on it. For genre browsing in particular, the Track Collection node and Smartlists cover the job with no add-ons.

There is no single best one, but the method that survives a live set has two layers. Genre gets you to the right shelf. A second axis, energy or mood or the moment in the night a track belongs to, gets you to the right record on it. Genre alone is too coarse, since a House list holds both your opener and your closer. Build the coarse layer from clean tags, then add the finer one on top of it, the way the rest of the Traktor library is structured.

Inline editing is a preference, and it ships as a switch you can turn off. Open Preferences, go to the Browser Details page, and check Allow Inline Editing in List Window. With that box unchecked, Traktor blocks tag editing in the Track List so nothing changes by accident during a live situation. If it is on and the field still refuses a cursor, right-click the track and choose Edit instead, which reaches every property the Track List does not show.

The usual cause is a track that Apple Music or iTunes still manages. Native Instruments recommends editing tag metadata only in iTunes when you use iTunes for collection management, because that library writes its own values back over yours. Import those tracks into the Track Collection properly first: select them under the iTunes node, right-click, and use Import to Collection as Tracks. Then edit the Genre field in Traktor and it sticks.

Almost always the filter text does not match the tag text. A Genre condition compares against what is literally written in the field, so Drum & Bass, Drum and Bass, and DnB are three separate genres as far as Traktor is concerned. Open the Genre node under Track Collection, read the spellings you actually have, then either match one of them exactly or fix the tags first with the Edit dialog. Smartlist rules go deeper on the conditions.

Partly. Traktor lets you add tags, searchable comments, cues, and markers to Beatport streaming tracks the same way you would for local files, and stores them in your Collection file, so they browse and sort alongside everything else. The limit is portability: while a streaming track sits on a deck, exporting playlists with tracks as files to other locations and devices is unavailable. Vibes only works on files you own, so streamed tracks stay outside it.

Use both, for different jobs. Playlist folders, made with Create Folder on the Playlists node, are structure: they nest your genre lists so the Browser Tree stays readable. The lists themselves are better as Smartlists, filled by a Genre condition and updated as you import. Keep hand-built playlists for fixed sets where running order matters, since a Smartlist cannot be dragged into order until you save it as a playlist. Playlists and folders covers the tree itself.

The idea carries, the menus do not. Every one of the big four stores a genre field per track and lets you sort a list by it, but the panel names, the paths, and the rule-based lists differ enough that following a Traktor guide in another app will send you hunting. Here is the same job written for each: Rekordbox, Serato, and Engine DJ.

From a Vibes customer

The import worked perfectly. Have created several sets now and my life is so much easier

Danny

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Methodology

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Reviewed by Ben Modigell, founder of Vibes and a working DJ in Cologne.

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Every step is checked against the current version of Traktor.

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We make Vibes. We show the native way first and honestly, then where Vibes genuinely helps, and we say when it does not.

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Last reviewed June 2026.

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