Serato crates and Rekordbox: what a crate is, how a DJ moves one, and why there is no text export

Four searches land on the same wall from different sides: export Serato crate to Rekordbox, convert Rekordbox playlist to Serato, export Serato crate as text, and, underneath all three, what are crates in Serato. They share an answer, and it is shorter and less satisfying than the search suggests: neither program documents a path to the other, and a crate is not a text file. Here is what each piece is, from Serato's and Pioneer's own documentation, and the route that works without inventing a feature.

What a crate is

A crate is Serato's word for a playlist: a named list of tracks, in an order you set, that you build by dragging tracks into it. Serato DJ Pro and Serato DJ Lite both have them, and a crate can hold subcrates.

What makes crates different from playlists in other software is where they live. Serato keeps a folder called `_Serato_` on every drive it uses, and inside it a `Subcrates` folder holding one `.crate` file per crate. That file is the crate: the list of file paths, in order. Your audio is wherever you put it; the crate only points at it.

This has one consequence people discover the hard way. A crate on your laptop points at files on your laptop. Copy the `.crate` file somewhere else and it points at nothing.

Getting a crate out of Serato

Serato's documented way to export a crate is to drag the crate onto a drive in the Files panel. Serato copies the tracks to that drive and writes the crate into that drive's own `_Serato_` folder, so the drive is self-contained: plug it into another Serato and the crate is there, tracks and all.

That is an export to another Serato. It is not an export to a format anyone else reads.

"Export Serato crate as text"

There is no official text export of a crate. Serato's support site does not document one, and a `.crate` file is not a text file you can open and paste — it is a binary list of paths. Forum workarounds exist; this article is not going to describe one it cannot verify.

What you can do without any of that is get the files out, which the drag-to-drive export does, and then read the list off the files. If what you wanted the text for was to plan or check the set — the usual reason — that is the step the free energy curve tool skips: it reads a folder's worth of audio tags in the browser, or a plain text list of "Artist - Title" lines typed out, no account needed, and gives you the set as a list and a curve. How far a bare text list gets you is in ordering a set from a plain text list.

Serato crate to Rekordbox

Rekordbox's manual — the current one, 266 pages — does not mention Serato once. Rekordbox imports music files and folders, an iTunes or Apple Music library, and its own rekordbox xml. A `.crate` file is none of those.

The route that works uses the one thing both programs read: a folder of files.

1. In Serato, drag the crate onto a drive in the Files panel. You now have a folder of the crate's tracks on that drive.
2. In Rekordbox, drag that folder from the Explorer node onto Playlists. The manual's own line: a playlist is created with the dropped folder's name.
3. The order does not come along. A folder has no order, and the `.crate` that remembers it is not read. Put it back by hand.

What travels with the files is whatever is in their tags: BPMBeats per minute: a track's tempo, and the first number any DJ looks at., keyThe note and mode a track is written in — what decides whether two tracks sit well together., and the comment field. Serato has no energy field of its own, so if a crate was tagged for energy it was done in the comment field — usually by Mixed In Key — and Rekordbox shows that in Comments. The map of who keeps energy where is in where Rekordbox, Serato and Traktor store energy tags.

Rekordbox playlist to Serato

The same wall from the other side. Serato's support site, searched for "rekordbox import", returns articles about importing music and about iTunes; not one about Rekordbox. Rekordbox, for its part, exports its collection as rekordbox xml (File, then Export Collection in xml format), which is a format for Rekordbox and for tools that chose to read it. Serato is not documented as one of them.

So the route is the mirror image:

1. Get the playlist's files into a folder. Rekordbox's USB export does this — the details, and what to do when the button is greyed out, are in exporting a Rekordbox playlist to USB.
2. In Serato, drag the folder onto the import area. Serato's manual: drag a folder in, and it imports the compatible files and makes a crate of it.
3. Order: by hand, again.

If you want the order with you while you rebuild it, the rekordbox xml is the file to keep. It records the playlist order, and the energy curve tool reads it directly — that gives you the list, in order, with energy, to work from while you drag tracks around in Serato.

What this article will not claim

EnergyCurve reads Rekordbox XML, Traktor NML, M3U8 and CSV, and reads audio tags straight from files. It does not read `.crate` files, and it does not write any DJ software's format from another's. It is not a converter, and it is not going to say the conversion step is easy when it is the step neither vendor built. What each format carries is listed on the import formats page; the comparison with Lexicon is the honest pointer for anyone whose real problem is the conversion itself, and Rekordbox vs Serato vs Traktor is the one for anyone still deciding which side to be on.