Rekordbox, Serato and Traktor: where each one stores a DJ's energy tags

An energy tag is a number a DJ puts on a track to say how intense it is, and there is no standard place to keep one. Rekordbox, Traktor, Serato and Mixed In KeyThe note and mode a track is written in — what decides whether two tracks sit well together. each write to a different field, and which field yours is in decides whether any other tool can read it at all. This is a map of where they go.

The confusion is not anyone's fault. The ID3 metadata standard has no energy field, so every tool borrowed a field meant for something else, and each picked a different one.

The short version

EnergyCurve reads all four, plus two more. The full list, with the exact frame names, is on the energy tags reference.

Rekordbox

Rekordbox has no energy column of its own, so DJs use one of two places.

Comments is the common one, and it is where Mixed In Key writes when it tags a library. If you have ever seen `7A - Energy 6` sitting in a track's comment, that is this.

Grouping is the other, and it is the better habit. It is a separate column, Rekordbox shows it in the track list, you can sort by it, and crucially it leaves the comment field free for actual notes — "intro is long", "clean edit", "do not play after the Anfisa record". DJs who tag by hand tend to end up here once they have lost a comment to a tool overwriting it.

Both are written into the file's ID3 tags, so both survive being read by something else — which is what makes an export from Rekordbox useful to a tool that is not Rekordbox.

Traktor

Traktor is the one with the most places, because its collection format carries fields the others do not expose.

Its INFO COMMENT field is the equivalent of Rekordbox's Comments, and it is where Mixed In Key lands. Traktor also has a second comment field, `COMMENT2`, which exists precisely because one was not enough, and a lot of DJs use it for energy so the first stays readable.

It also has INFO PRODUCER and a lyrics field, `KEY_LYRICS`. Both get used for energy by people who have run out of obvious places. The lyrics one sounds absurd until you notice its actual advantage: nothing else reads it, so nothing else overwrites it.

The practical consequence is that a Traktor NML export can carry an energy value in any of four fields, and a tool that checks only one will tell a DJ their library is untagged when it is not.

Serato

Serato is the awkward one, and it is worth being straight about why rather than implying a feature exists.

Serato does not expose an energy field in its own interface. DJs who want energy in a Serato library either write it into the comment field — where Mixed In Key puts it anyway — or keep it somewhere outside Serato entirely.

So "where does Serato store energy tags" has an unsatisfying answer: it mostly does not, and what you have is whatever wrote to the comment field before Serato read it. The good news is that the comment field is ordinary ID3, so a Serato library tagged by Mixed In Key is readable by anything that parses comments.

Which one wins when a track has several

This is the question that actually causes trouble, because a track that has been through two tools often carries two values that disagree.

EnergyCurve resolves it with a stated precedence rather than a guess. A field literally named `ENERGY` settles it outright, in any written form, because a value in a field named for the purpose was put there deliberately. Failing that, the order is the comment field, Traktor's second comment field, Grouping, lyrics, producer, composer.

There is a second rule underneath that one, and it matters more often than the first. An explicitly written value anywhere beats a bare number everywhere: a comment reading `Energy 8` wins over a producer field that happens to contain `3`. Without it, any field with a stray digit in it would outrank a value somebody actually wrote, purely because it sits earlier in the list.

The reason to have a stated order at all is that the alternative — first one found, or last one wins — makes the result depend on the order fields happen to appear in a file, which is not a property anyone can reason about.

What this means for getting a curve

You do not need to migrate your tags anywhere. The point of reading six fields instead of one is that your library works as it is.

What is worth knowing is which field yours are in, for one reason: if you ever move software, that decides whether the tagging work you have done for years comes with you. A value in Grouping or a dedicated ENERGY field travels. A value in Traktor's `COMMENT2` is a Traktor fact. What else does and does not make the trip is written up per route: Traktor to Rekordbox and Serato crates and Rekordbox, in both directions.

If you want to see what a tool actually reads out of your library, the fastest check is to dropThe moment a track releases all its energy, after the tension that built up to it. an export into the energy curve tool — it takes Rekordbox XML, Traktor NML, M3U8 and CSV, needs no account, and will show you a curve built from whatever it found. If it finds nothing, planning a set with no BPM or key covers what to do next, and what an energy curve is covers what you are looking at once it works.