Your library

CuePoint keeps its own copy of your Rekordbox collection. Import an XML export once and CuePoint holds your tracks, your playlists and what is in them, so everything else it does can start from your actual music instead of asking you for a file every time. The Library page is also where you browse it: playlists, filters, sorting and a track’s full detail.

Open Library in the sidebar.

Importing your Rekordbox collection

Until something is imported, the Library says Nothing imported yet and shows the three steps below, with Import your Rekordbox collection… at the top and How do I export one? for the Rekordbox side.

1. In Rekordbox, use File → Export Collection in xml format and save the file somewhere you will find it again. Downloads is fine.
2. In CuePoint, open Library and click Import your Rekordbox collection….
3. Pick the file. CuePoint reads it in the background — you can keep using the rest of the app, and the strip along the bottom shows how far it has got. Nothing in Rekordbox is changed.

When it finishes, the page shows what CuePoint now holds and which file it came from. It remembers that file, so checking for changes later takes one click.

The header then has three buttons, side by side: Check Rekordbox for changes, Import another file… (to switch to a different export) and Export to Rekordbox… — see Exporting to Rekordbox. In a narrow window or at a large size they read Check Rekordbox, Import… and Export…; their full names are what a screen reader hears. The badge beside the file’s path says In sync, Changed in Rekordbox, File not found or Not checked yet, and last read says when CuePoint last read the file.

After an import, a note under the header says CuePoint is checking that your music files are where Rekordbox says, reading their cover art and drawing each track’s waveform, and that you can browse and play while it works. A “Now:” line shows the step and how far it is, for example Now: drawing waveforms, 1,204 of 12,000. Close it with Dismiss; it goes by itself when the work ends. When that work is done and no track has a Beatport key yet, the same line says so and offers Match tracks…, which opens the match window in Clean.

A 50,000-track collection takes about eleven seconds to import. See Performance for the measured numbers.

If the file is not right

CuePoint refuses a file that is not a Rekordbox collection export rather than importing an empty library and telling you it worked. If you exported a single playlist instead of the whole collection, the file has no collection in it and CuePoint will say so — export again with File → Export Collection.

Browsing your library

Once something is imported, the Library page is your collection: the playlists down the left, the tracks in the middle, and everything CuePoint knows about whichever track you clicked in Track details on the right.

Nothing here changes your music. The Library page reads.

Finding tracks

• Click a playlist on the left to look at just that playlist. Folders show everything underneath them. All tracks goes back to the whole library.
• Type in the search box to narrow to matching titles, artists, albums and labels. It also understands keys and tempos: “8A” finds the tracks in 8A (so does “A minor”), and “124” finds the tracks at 124 BPM, from 123.5 up to 124.5 (type “124.5” to ask for exactly that). A row found that way says so under its title — “Key 8A” or “124 BPM” — and the same appears in the search from anywhere (Ctrl+K). It searches whatever you are looking at, so a search inside a playlist stays inside that playlist.
• Use the quick filters beside the search box: Key ▾ (the keys in what you are looking at, in Camelot order, with how many tracks each has, and No Beatport key), BPM ▾ (a From and To range) and Genre ▾ (the most common genres). Each choice becomes a chip on the same row; choosing a second key makes one “any of” chip. The quick filters are on the Library table only. When no track has a Beatport key yet, the Key list says No tracks have a Beatport key yet. Keys come from matching. and offers Match tracks…. If a Key filter finds nothing, the line above the table says the same.
• Add a filter for anything more specific — BPM between 124 and 130, genre is Techno, comment contains “promo”. The fields are grouped (Track, Your notes and ratings, Rekordbox only, Beatport match, Files, Where it is). Filters stack, and the bar says how many tracks are left after them. The row scrolls sideways when there are many chips and says “+N more”; Clear all filters removes them all. A filter another page opened, such as an artist (Beatport artist is …) or Similar to “…”, is a chip like any other.
• In playlist (under Where it is) keeps tracks that are in any of the playlists, Collections or Sets you pick. A Smart Collection cannot be picked: it is a rule, not a list, so CuePoint says so. Saving a Smart Collection while a playlist is open adds an In playlist rule, so the saved view keeps its playlist.
• Click a column heading to sort by it; click again to reverse it.

Filter by one artist or one label, however it is spelled. Two filters look for an artist or a label rather than for text:

• Credited artist finds the tracks an artist is credited on — as one of several artists, as a featured artist, or as the remixer. “Credited artist is B” finds “A, B” and “B feat. D”, and not “Bob B”, which Artist contains B would. Credits are split at commas and at “feat.”, “ft.” and “featuring”, but not at “&”, “and”, “x” or “vs”, so “Above & Beyond” stays one act.
• Label, any spelling finds a label’s tracks whatever the spelling: “Nightfall Audio”, “NIGHTFALL AUDIO” and “Nightfall-Audio” are one label. It reads your own label when you have set one, as the Label column does.

Both ignore capitals, accents on letters like é and Â, and punctuation, and both offer the names in your library to choose from. The first time CuePoint starts after this update it takes a few seconds to index your artists and labels — Getting artist and label pages ready in the status strip — and until then these two filters may find fewer tracks than they should.

Beatport artist and Beatport label find an artist’s or a label’s tracks by its Beatport id, the number at the end of its page address on beatport.com. A track counts when its accepted Beatport match credits that artist or label, and so does a track that is not matched yet when its artist or label name has been tied to that id by the tracks that are, and to no other artist of the same name. They need CuePoint to have read your matched tracks’ credits from Beatport, which needs a Beatport token, and until it has they find nothing.

A playlist opens in the order you arranged it in Rekordbox, which is what a set list is for. The whole library opens by artist. Sorting a playlist by anything else and then going back to All tracks does not carry that sort over.

When a table is empty

An empty table says why and offers the next step as a button:

Choosing columns

Columns…, at the right of the row above the table, opens the list. Nine are shown to start with — the ones a DJ reads — and fourteen more are there if you want them: remixer, year, plays, date added, color, bitrate, comment, the file path, four from Clean — Match, Score, File status and Artwork — Waveform, which draws each track’s waveform, and Loudness, which says how loud each track is, in LUFS (see Waveforms). Turn them on and off, drag a heading to move a column, drag its edge to resize it. CuePoint remembers all of it.

BPM, genre, label and year show your value when you have set one. A small mark beside the value says so — B when it was applied from Beatport, a dot when you typed it — and pointing at the mark, or tabbing to it, says in words where the value came from and what Rekordbox has underneath. The Columns list repeats what the marks mean. A key is marked only when you typed it: a key from Beatport is the track’s key, not an edit.

Key is Beatport’s key. A track’s key is the one you typed, or else the key of its accepted Beatport match, shown in Camelot (8A). Rekordbox’s key is never used, so a track with no accepted match shows “—” in the Key column (point at the heading: Keys come from Beatport matches), and every key filter, count, check and export leaves it out. After a fresh import no track has a key until matching runs: open Clean and match your library. The key filter understands every notation, so “Key is 8A” finds a track whose Beatport key is “A minor”.

There is one Key field, and it compares keys by what they mean, so 8A, “A minor” and “Am” are the same. The one that used to be called “CuePoint key” is Your key, and Rekordbox’s own is Key from Rekordbox (not used), in the Rekordbox only group.

Selecting tracks

Click to select, Ctrl+click (Cmd+click) to add one, Shift+click for a range — a range works even across parts of a long list you have not scrolled to yet.

Ctrl+A selects everything matching what you are looking at, filters and all. That means everything, not just the rows on screen: select-all over a filtered 47,000-track view selects 47,000 tracks. Esc lets go. Ctrl+F puts the cursor in the search box.

With the table focused (click it or Tab to it), Up and Down select the previous or next track and Shift with them extends the selection; Home, End, Page Up and Page Down jump; Ctrl+Space adds or removes the focused track (on a Mac, Cmd+click does); Enter plays it. Enter and Shift+F10 act on the last row you clicked, including a Shift-click. The list scrolls to keep it in view.

A toolbar sits directly above the table: one line when there is room, two at the default window size, with the six groups on the first and Clear selection, the count, Select all and Columns… on the second. If the count does not fit beside them it is cut short (ending in “…”) rather than pushing a button onto a third line. On its left is the selection bar; on its right are the track count (“1,204 tracks · 3 selected”, or “Showing 240 of 12,000 tracks” while a search or filter narrows the view), Select all and Columns…. The bar is always there, so the table never moves when you select something: with nothing selected its buttons are dimmed and say “Select tracks first”. It has six groups, each a button that opens a list, and Clear selection:

A track’s right-click menu holds the same groups as submenus: Play, Play next and Add to queue on its first lines, then Organize ▸, Explore ▸, Beatport ▸, Fix ▸ and More ▸. Use the Tab key once to reach the bar, then the arrow keys to move between its buttons.

Copy puts the visible columns, in the order you have them, ready to paste into a spreadsheet; it is capped at 5,000 tracks and tells you when it hit the cap. Show in folder works for a single track; if its file is no longer where Rekordbox says it is, it opens the nearest folder that still exists, and says so. A filter chip that names one artist or label, such as “Credited artist is Mara Veil”, offers Open page.

Track details

Selecting one track fills Track details. From the top:

• The track’s artwork, or No artwork when it has none, its title, and its artists and label. Each artist in the credit, and the label, is a link to their page (see Discover).
• Five buttons: Play, Play next, Add to queue, Similar tracks and Show in folder. With several tracks selected, the first three act on all of them; Similar tracks uses the first, and Show in folder the one shown.
• Key, with where it came from: “8A · A minor · Beatport”, “8A · A minor · yours”, or “No Beatport key” with Match on Beatport, which matches this one track in Clean’s match window.
• Its waveform, with its cue points, loops and beat grid; when the track is the one playing, a click on it seeks. Under it, its loudness: “Loudness −8.4 LUFS · Peak −0.3 dBFS”. See Waveforms.

Then the sections, each folded or opened by clicking its heading:

• Yours — what you have added in CuePoint: your rating, favorite, notes and tags, and Edit values… for your key, BPM, genre, label and year. See Organizing your library and Your own values.
• Details from Rekordbox — everything the import captured: remixer, album, label, genre, key (marked “not used”), BPM, year, length, rating, plays, color, comment, bitrate, when it was added and where the file is. This part is read-only. It is what Rekordbox sent, and a refresh replaces it.
• Cue points, also from Rekordbox and also read-only: every hot cue, memory cue, loop, fade and load point, one line each in the order the track plays them, and the beat grid’s tempo. See Cue points and beat grids.
• Where it is — the Collections, Sets and playlists the track is in. Click one to jump to it.
• Beatport — where the track stands with its Beatport match. Folded until you open it; its heading says how the match stands (“Beatport · Accepted”). See The Beatport section.
• History — every change to the track, and who made it. Folded, its heading counts the changes (“History · 4 changes”).

With several tracks selected, the panel shows the last one you clicked, and Edit values for 4 tracks… opens Clean’s Fix values for all of them.

Ctrl+I hides Track details if you would rather have the width. Double-clicking a track plays it; see The player.

Large collections

Browsing 50,000 tracks does not load 50,000 tracks. CuePoint fetches what is on screen and a little either side, so scrolling stays smooth and memory stays flat however far you go. A row that has not arrived yet is blank for a moment rather than moving everything around it. See Performance for the measured numbers.

Refreshing after Rekordbox changes

Your collection moves on: you buy tracks, you rate them, you delete things. CuePoint does not watch the file, so you decide when to catch up.

Open Library and press Check Rekordbox for changes.

• If nothing has changed, CuePoint says so immediately. It does not re-read a 50,000-track file to tell you nothing happened — it compares the file’s modified time and size against what it recorded when it imported.
• If something has changed, CuePoint reads the export and shows you exactly what a refresh would do before doing any of it.

The page also tells you, without being asked, when the export has changed since your last import — that is what Changed in Rekordbox means next to the file name. Not checked yet means CuePoint could not tell, so check to be sure.

What the preview shows

Nothing happens until you press the confirm button. Cancel changes nothing — the preview only reads.

What a refresh deletes

A refresh deletes the tracks that are no longer in your export, and it cannot be undone.

Anything CuePoint has attached to those tracks goes with them: ratings, tags, play history, and — from a later release — their membership of any Collection or Set you have built. This is deliberate. CuePoint’s library is a mirror of Rekordbox’s, and a mirror that kept tracks you deleted would slowly fill with things you cannot see in Rekordbox and cannot get rid of in CuePoint.

The preview is there so this is a decision rather than a surprise. It names the number, tells you what goes with them, and puts that number on the button you press. If you are not sure, Cancel and look at Rekordbox first.

Removing a track from a playlist does not delete it. Only a track that has left your collection entirely is removed.

Re-numbering is not deletion

Rekordbox sometimes hands out new TrackIDs — after rebuilding a library, or on some upgrades. CuePoint matches those tracks by their file instead, keeps everything attached to them, and reports them as re-linked. They are not deleted and re-added, and they do not appear in the removal count.

When CuePoint cannot tell whether the file changed

If CuePoint says it could not tell whether the export changed, check it anyway — that message means the file’s details could not be read, not that nothing happened.

Very rarely, an export can be edited without its size or modified time changing, and CuePoint would then say nothing has changed when something has. Re-exporting from Rekordbox always fixes this, because a fresh export has a new modified time.

Five things worth knowing

What you do in CuePoint stays in CuePoint

Collections, tags, ratings, favorites, notes and your own values are CuePoint’s, and they are invisible in Rekordbox. CuePoint reads your export and never writes to it, so nothing you organize here changes what Rekordbox shows you. Two things take your work out of CuePoint, and each happens only when you ask, after a preview: Exporting to Rekordbox, which writes a new XML file with your values and Collections (tags, notes and favorites stay behind), and Writing tags to files. See Organizing your library.

CuePoint checks that your files are still there — and never moves them

After every import and every refresh, CuePoint looks for each track’s file where Rekordbox says it is. The check runs in the background: the status strip shows Checking files with its progress and a Stop button, and the Activity panel records what it found. It only looks — nothing is read, moved, renamed or deleted, and CuePoint never writes to your audio files while doing it.

Each track ends up with a File status you can filter by in the Library:

Last checked on disk filters by the day a file was last checked.

An unplugged drive is one line, not thousands. If every track on a drive is missing because the drive itself is not there, the Activity panel says so once — for example 4,812 tracks on E:\ — the drive is not connected — and CuePoint does not look for each file on it. Plug the drive in and refresh, and the next check finds them.

Fix a moved file in Rekordbox. The path belongs to Rekordbox: use its Relocate command on the missing track, export again, and refresh in CuePoint. The refresh brings in the new path and the check that follows it confirms the file.

A large library on a spinning disk or a network share can take a while to check the first time; you can keep working while it runs, and stopping it keeps everything it already checked.

CuePoint points out possible duplicates — and never removes them

After every import, refresh and match, CuePoint looks for tracks that may be the same recording. The status strip shows Finding duplicates while it looks, and the Activity panel records what it found. Each group says why its tracks were put together:

Filter the Library with Possible duplicate, or with Why it looks like a duplicate to see one kind. A track can be in more than one group, for example when a file imported twice is also the same title twice.

The artist-and-title signal is the one that can be wrong: two different recordings can share a name. That is why every group names what grouped it. A plain title and its “Original Mix” count as one mix; an Extended Mix, a remix by someone else or “Part 2” do not.

CuePoint never deletes, merges or edits a duplicate. A track removed in CuePoint would come back with the next refresh, and the file is yours. If you want a duplicate gone, remove it in Rekordbox and refresh.

CuePoint reads your artwork — and never changes it

After every file check, CuePoint reads the picture each of your files carries. The status strip shows Reading artwork while it does, and the Activity panel records how many files have a picture. Only files the check found are opened.

For a track whose Beatport match you accepted, CuePoint also knows Beatport’s artwork for that release. It is downloaded only when it is needed, only from Beatport, and never for a match you have not accepted. Offline, it is simply not there — nothing fails.

Filter the Library with Artwork, or show it as a column:

A picture is only opened if it is a JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF or BMP of a sensible size. Anything else is counted as unreadable and left alone, because a picture from an unknown file or a website is exactly the kind of thing that should not be opened blindly.

CuePoint keeps small copies of the artwork for display, never the originals, in a cache that is capped at 512 MB and is not part of your backups. Clear cache now in the Privacy dialog empties it, as does Clear cache on exit; the copies are made again as they are needed.

Reading artwork writes nothing to your files. Adding Beatport’s artwork to a file that has none is an option when you write tags to files, and it never replaces a picture a file already has.

Cue points and beat grids come from Rekordbox — and stay there

An import and a refresh read each track’s cue points and beat grid from the export, the ones you set in Rekordbox. Track details lists them under Cue points:

Cues · 2 hot, 3 memory
■ Memory · 0:00.0 · Intro
■ A · 1:04.0 · Drop
■ C · 2:00.0–2:07.5 · Loop · Build loop
Beat grid · 128.00 BPM

• A hot cue is its letter, A to H; a memory cue says Memory. A loop shows where it starts and ends; a fade-in, fade-out or load point says which it is. Times are to a tenth of a second, and the square is the cue’s color in Rekordbox.
• A grid that changes tempo says variable, with the range.
• They are read-only. Nothing in CuePoint edits a cue or a grid, and an export to Rekordbox never writes one: it leaves every cue in your collection exactly as it was. To change a cue, change it in Rekordbox, export, and refresh.
• A refresh replaces a track’s cues and grid with the export’s, and the preview counts the tracks whose cues or grid changed, in one line.
• A mark CuePoint does not recognize, or one Rekordbox wrote incompletely, is skipped rather than guessed at, and the import says how many it skipped.

A library imported before this release has its cues read once from the collection file it was imported from, the first time CuePoint starts, if that file is still exactly as it was. The status strip shows Reading your cue points while it does, and Activity records it. If the file has changed since, the Track details says Cue points and the beat grid are read from Rekordbox. They appear after you Check Rekordbox for changes. and they do.

One import, for everything

Everything in CuePoint reads this one library, so you import your collection once. Discover, which replaced inCrate, works on it directly; inCrate kept a separate copy of its own, which nothing reads any more — see Where inCrate went.

Clean in the Library

Everything the Clean page knows about a track is visible here too, and the Clean actions on a track are in the selection bar’s Beatport ▸ and Fix ▸ and in its right-click menu. They open Clean with the tracks you selected; deciding a match (accept or reject) is done there, in Review.

Columns and filters

Each of the first three sorts by what needs you first. The same facts are filters: Beatport match, Match decided by (you or CuePoint), Changed since you decided, Beatport match score, File status and Artwork. A filter whose values are a fixed list offers them to pick from rather than a box to type into.

The Clean actions

Accepting a match changes no value on its own. Apply is what copies Beatport’s values, and they become your values — Rekordbox’s stay underneath.

The Beatport section

Track details’ Beatport section says where the track stands, who decided it, and which Beatport track was decided, with its match score (how closely Beatport’s track matches yours; higher is closer). For each of BPM, genre, label and year it shows three lines — Rekordbox, Beatport and Using — and says whether Using is Rekordbox’s value, one applied from Beatport, or one you typed. A track not looked up yet gets one sentence and Match on Beatport. Copying Beatport’s values is done in Review and in Fix values, not here. Open on the Clean page takes you to the track’s review.

Your own values

Choose Edit values… under Yours to set a key, BPM, genre, label or year for the track. It is the same editor Clean’s Fix values uses, and shows what each value is now. Choose Clear mine for a field to go back. The Your values line under it lists what you have edited, opens by itself when there is something to list, and offers Go back for each: to Rekordbox’s value, or for the key to Beatport’s key, or to none. CuePoint checks every value: a key in classic (Am), Camelot (8A) or short (Amin) notation, a BPM between 20 and 300 with at most two decimals, a year from 1900 to next year, and a genre or label up to 200 characters. A value it refuses is explained in the editor, and nothing is saved.

A key you type is a correction: it beats Beatport’s key for that track, and it stays when a match is rejected. Your values are what the Library shows, sorts and filters by, and what Smart Collections match. Rekordbox’s value is still there: filter with Rekordbox BPM, for example, to ask about it alone.

Taking a change back

Track details’ History offers Revert beside every change you made in CuePoint — a rating, a favorite, a note, a tag, one of your values or a match decision. Changes Rekordbox made are not offered: change those in Rekordbox.

A revert that would throw away a later change is refused, and says what the value is now. Revert the later change first, or edit the value directly.

A change made to many tracks at once is taken back from its entry in the Activity panel: Revert this batch, then Revert to confirm. Adding tracks to a Collection or removing them from one cannot be reverted; its entry says so. A revert is itself a change, and can be reverted too.

Writing tags to files

Save changes into the files… puts your values into the audio files themselves, so Rekordbox and other software can read them. It is the one thing CuePoint does outside its own library, so it always goes in the same order:

1. Choose what to write: key (in the notation you choose; a track with no key keeps the key its file already has), BPM, year, genre, label, a comment, and whether to add Beatport’s artwork to files that have none. The comment is off to start with, because it replaces whatever comment a file has.
2. Preview. CuePoint reads the files and says how many would change, which values would be written, and which files are skipped and why. The preview is a read and changes nothing. Changing an option throws the preview away.
3. Write. Only after a preview has answered. Each value a file held is recorded before it is replaced.

What is written is the value you see in the Library: yours where you have one, Rekordbox’s otherwise. A field a file already holds is not written again.

Files that are skipped

Artwork is added only to files that have none, and only when you ask. A file’s own picture is never replaced.

Rekordbox shows the new values only after it re-reads the files

Rekordbox keeps its own copy of every tag. Until it re-reads a file, it keeps showing the old values. In Rekordbox, select the tracks and choose Reload Tag. Then refresh CuePoint’s library, if you want Rekordbox’s values here to match.

Restoring

After a write, the dialog offers Restore these files, and so does the write’s entry in the Activity panel. Track details’ History offers Put the file back as it was for one track. A restore puts back every tag value the write replaced, and removes a picture it added.

A value you or another program changed in the file since the write is left alone, and the restore says so.

A restored file can stay slightly larger than it was. Every value is back, but the tag keeps the room it grew into, as every tagging program does. That room is reused by the next write.

“May not have finished”

CuePoint records each value before it touches the file, and confirms it after reading the file back. If CuePoint closes while writing — it is quit, it crashes, the computer shuts down — some values are recorded but not confirmed. The Activity panel then says Writing tags stopped when CuePoint closed, and how many writes may not have finished. They are never counted as written.

Such a file may hold the new value or still hold the old one. Restore is the safe answer either way: a file that still holds its old value counts as already restored, and one that holds the new value gets the old one back. Then write again if you still want to.

Where the data lives

Your library is a single SQLite file in your CuePoint home directory (~/.cuepoint/cuepoint.db on macOS and Linux, %USERPROFILE%\.cuepoint\ on Windows). About 20 MB for 50,000 tracks, and more once they are matched: every Beatport candidate a match found is kept, about 300 MB for 30,000 matched tracks — see Performance. CuePoint backs it up on launch, and the Activity panel lists those backups along with every import and refresh — which is where to look if you want to know what a refresh actually did.

Nothing is uploaded anywhere. The library never leaves your machine.

See also

• Organizing your library — Collections, tags and ratings
• Clean — matching on Beatport, reviewing, missing files, duplicates and Health
• Discover — new music from your artists and labels, the wantlist, artist and label pages, and similar tracks
• Prepare — Sets: running orders with chapters, planned times and checks
• The CuePoint window — navigation, search, the status strip, and the keys for Clean’s review queue
• Performance — measured timings at 50,000 tracks
• Troubleshooting