Getting music into Serato takes about four seconds once you know where to drop it. The part worth two minutes of your attention is what actually happens when you do, because that is what decides whether your library still works in six months.
What adding music does
Serato writes an entry in its database saying where the file is, and from then on tracks what it knows about it: the waveform analysis, cue points, loops, gain and beatgrid.
Your audio file does not move, does not get copied, and does not get modified in the process. Which is good, because it means importing a large library is instant and costs no disk space. It is also the reason a file moved in Finder afterwards goes missing in Serato.
Method 1Drag a folder in
The fastest route, and the one most people should use.
- Open Serato and find it alongside a Finder window.
- Drag a folder from Finder onto the crates panel down the left side.
- Serato creates a crate named after the folder and fills it with the tracks inside.
- Repeat for each folder you want in.
This is the one to know because it preserves a decision you already made. If your drive is organized, dragging a folder brings that organization across with it instead of dumping loose tracks into a pile.
Method 2The Files panel
Serato can browse your drive from inside the app. Open the Files panel, navigate to the folder, and drag tracks from there into the library or into a crate.
Useful when you want part of a folder rather than all of it, or when you are working from a USB drive and would rather not switch between apps.
Method 3Drop straight into the library
Dragging files onto All in the library adds them without putting them anywhere in particular. Fine for a handful of tracks you are about to file properly, and a bad habit at volume: a few hundred tracks added this way and you have a library with no structure at all.
Right after importing
Analyse the files
Serato reads the audio and builds the waveform, works out the tempo and sets the gain. Do it now, in bulk, while nothing depends on it. Analysing during a set is the classic avoidable problem.
Check the beatgrid on anything tricky
Detection is good on programmed drums and less certain on live playing or anything with tempo drift. Spot check the tracks you actually intend to mix.
Look at what came in
Sort by artist or by name and scan for duplicates and half-tagged files. It is far easier to fix the moment they arrive than after they are spread across crates.
Decide where it lives
Newly added music that never gets filed becomes a pile you avoid. Even a single Unplayed crate is better than nothing.
If you are importing a whole organized drive
Dragging folders in one at a time is fine for ten folders and tedious for two hundred, which is where most people give up and end up with half their music in Serato.
DJBrooo does the whole thing at once. You pick the folders you want, and they appear in Serato nested exactly as they are on your drive. It reads every format you would be playing, mp3, wav, aiff, flac, aac, alac and ogg, plus video, and it finds your Serato library wherever it is, including external and USB drives.
It adds only what is new, so running it again after buying music tops the library up rather than duplicating it, and it takes a timestamped backup before every run. Your cues, gain and beatgrids are never touched.