party music

[daveyjay]

Hello all. I'm looking to put together a couple of playlists to use for an evenings music at an upcoming party and would like to know the best/most fail proof way to go about it. I'm thinking I've got three basic options:

Burn the music to cd

Create playlists on Spotify

Create playlists on an mp3 player or laptop

Each of the above have their pros and cons, I know, but has anyone done this sort thing and made a real success/hash of things on the night?

Whichever option I go for, I'm going to want to crossfade the tracks so that there aren't big silent gaps twix each groovy tune - does anyone know of the best way to go about doing this? I'm thinking there is some pretty nifty software out there...

 

[The_Lhc]

Most PC media player software can do crossfading, I used MediaMonkey when I did a party last year. Irritatingly it isn't adjustable, dbPowerAmp's player was, however they no longer develop the player software, which is a shame.

Burning stuff to CD isn't going to give you much flexibility and I doubt you can cross-fade the tracks on the CD. At least with the PC you can drop in a track as and when someone requests it.

 

[Paul.]

Spotify is good fun because you can make a playlist for your guests to add tracks too. Could be risky though... I guess you could preen the list beforehand.

 

[Lee H]

I had to do this at a friends last weekend. She already had a laptop but uses a late 80's twin tape/CD thingy for music! She asked me to do the music so I took my speakers from our kitchen round.

Any-hoo, there was already a facebook group for the party (it was a reunion) so I posted and asked people what they wanted to hear. I sat at home and built a playlist from their requests in Spotify, got to our friends, installed Spotify on her laptop and let it do its thing. Once people sussed how it was all working it made for really good fun with people asking, "See if you can find this, I haven't heard it for years." I'll certainly do it this way again.

At the end of the night, I saved the whole queue as a new playlist and was able to post the link on Facebook.

When you think about it, it's incredibly clever really how technology was able to help out.

**EDIT** Just read about the crossfade requirement. Spotify won't do that. If you have your own music then I'd look at a laptop and MediaMonkey. It has a Party Mode which will allow people to queue up tracks without accidentally messing with your library - it crossfades too. I let my Sonos do this at home but MM should work too.