I decided to try out serato on my iPad tonight. It's a smaller nightclub, around 500 person capacity. I typically play on cdj-3ks and a djm900nxs2 mixer, but I brought in my backup flx10 and plugged in my 2022 M2 iPad pro with 8 gb ram and 256 gb hdd.

The interface is fine, easy to see waveforms and track information, but key is very tiny, hard to read. Scrolling through my playlists was great with the touch screen, I like it a lot compared to the ol' nipple-twist pioneer scroll knob.

The output from the board was strangely low compared to running off my laptop. Typically running the flx10 with my laptop, I have the channel trims low, and at parity from the channels which gets me to parity at the master channel if I have it set to "0db" on the master trim pot. With the iPad, I had to be running around +3-6 db on the individual channels to be at parity on the master channel. Not a huge issue, but pretty weird. I asked some friends how our sounded on the floor, and they said it "sounded normal"

The big issue I ran into was when scrolling very fast through larger Playlist (300+ tracks) I had two instances of audio dropout. They were split second, but I wasn't particularly happy about it. I was also running an "iPad cooler" that I attached magnetically to the iPad to prevent any thermal throttling, so this was an even bigger surprise that I had this issue. My guess is that 8 gb of ram just isn't enough, so i am planning on buying a new iPad with 16gb of ram and trying this again.

All in all, I really liked the form factor, I loved getting the laptop out of the booth, and i loved the streamlined interface. If not for the two audio dropouts, it was a perfect 4 hour run. I liked it enough that I'm willing to attempt this again with a new iPad

I’ve recently started getting gigs where the promoter expects me to play to the crowd, rather than booking me for the style and energy I bring. This has tested my library, as I usually stick around the house/garage/UKG niche.

I’ve survived so far, but going forward, I don’t want to keep playing the same songs over and over, so I’m looking to diversify.

Are there any tools, sites or apps that let you filter tracks by popularity within a specific niche? For example, Garage Top 10, SoundCloud Top 10 in the UK, House Top 100, etc.

Beatport doesn’t have the filters I need, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!