Dan Amitai

I recently purchased Mixed in Key and am overall very happy with it.  Here are some thoughts:

Pros

• This software has helped me find track pairings that would have never occurred to me otherwise, particularly in the rock and funk genre. Metallica’s “Fade To Black” vs. Glass Candy’s cover of “Computer Love”?  Who would’ve thunk it?  Awesome.
• Can store key information in several different ways (9A vs. Em) and in several different places in the tags or file names.
• Customer service and technical support is stellar — very quick to respond via e-mail.

Cons

• This software requires an Internet connection, because it sends song information to the Mixed in Key database for key analysis. While I’m not too concerned about privacy, the biggest issues here is that you cannot scan tracks on the fly at or before a gig — you must key all your tunes in advance.
• While it can analyze WAV files, you can’t save the information in their ID3 tags since WAV files have none.
• It took me over a day of just letting my computer run to analyze my entire DJ library (approximately 15,000 tunes), and crashed multiple times due to issues with the ID3 tags.
• Not really a con of the software, but an annoyance of the process: I have to run my MP3s through three places. First, MIK to set the key; then Serato to build the overviews. And then add to iTunes. Laaaame. I would love to see MIK integrated into Serato.

Other notes

• To use this well, you will have to use the “pitch lock” feature on your mixing software or CD players.
• You will have to rescan your song database (iTunes, Serato etc.) after writing all the keys.
• Setting up Smart Playlists in iTunes will help you view songs by key with ease.