Serato calls them Smart Crates. Rekordbox calls them Intelligent Playlists. Lexicon calls them Smartlists. They all do the same basic job: you write rules once, and the list fills itself from your library. But the rule engines are not equal, and the differences decide which crates you can actually build. Below is a side-by-side of what each engine can do, then eight rules worth copying into whichever app you play out of.
How the two rule engines compare
Serato DJ Pro keeps it simple. According to Serato's Smart Crates support article, you add rules on fields like Added, Artist, Album, BPM, Comment, Genre, Grouping, Key, Label, Rating, Remixer, Song, Year and DJ Playcount. Text fields use Contains, Is, Does not contain and Is not. Two settings matter most:
- Match all of the following Rules - ticked means a track must pass every rule, unticked means any single rule is enough.
- Live Update - when on, the crate refreshes as your library changes. When off, it only changes when you hit refresh.
Rekordbox works the same way at heart. You right-click Playlists in the tree view, pick Create New Intelligent Playlist, and set conditions in the condition window (see the rekordbox 6 manual). You choose whether all or any conditions must match. Rekordbox 6 and 7 add My Tag conditions, which is the closest thing either app has to a real tagging system.
What neither app gives you:
- Grouped logic. It is one switch for the whole list, all or any. You cannot say "House or Techno, and also BPM between 122 and 128" in a single crate. Pioneer DJ users have been asking for nested conditions for years.
- Fields they do not store. Serato has no Energy field. Rekordbox does not store a last played date at all, so a "not played in six months" list is off the table there.
- Library health fields. Neither engine lets you filter on things like missing files.
Lexicon Smartlists cover those gaps. You set Any Rule or All Rules, and in All Rules mode you can link rules with an OR clause, which gives you exactly the grouped logic above: (Genre = House OR Genre = Techno) AND (Rating = 3). There is no limit on the number of rules, and new tracks drop in automatically when they match. Details are in the Lexicon smartlist manual.
8 rules worth stealing
Each rule below is written for Serato and Rekordbox first, with the Lexicon version where it adds something.
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New arrivals. The crate every DJ should have pinned to the top.
- Serato: Added, set to 30 days ago. Live Update on. You need to change this date before use, Serato does not support relative dates.
- Rekordbox: Date Added within the last 30 days.
- Lexicon: a Date Added rule for the last 30 days. -
Untagged tracks. Anything with an empty or junk genre is a track you will never find mid-set.
- Serato and Rekordbox: the reliable trick is a Comment rule that catches an inbox marker, for example Comment Contains "todo". Add that marker to new downloads on import and the crate empties as you clean.
- Lexicon: Custom Tags make this cleaner. A Has none of these tags rule lists every track that has not been tagged yet. -
Peak-time by BPM. Match all, BPM greater than 124, BPM less than 130, Rating at 4 or higher. Works in both apps as long as you keep all rules on one genre family, because you cannot add an OR for a second genre.
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Peak-time by energy. This one needs an Energy value, which neither Serato nor Rekordbox stores natively. In Lexicon, use the Field Mapper to map Energy ➡ Comment. Lexicon writes it as a two-digit number followed by the field name, like "08 Energy", so it sorts correctly. Then in Serato or Rekordbox: - Comment Contains "08 Energy" OR "09 Energy" OR "10 Energy" (Match any)
That turns a field your DJ app does not have into one it can filter on.
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Harmonic neighbours of a key. For 8A, build a Match any crate with Key Is 8A, 7A, 9A and 8B. The catch: because it is a Match any crate, you cannot add a BPM rule on top. In Lexicon you can, using All Rules with the four key rules linked by OR, plus a BPM rule. Lexicon's Mixable Tracks feature is another way to find compatible tracks for the one that is playing.
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Not played in six months.
- Serato: DJ Playcount helps you find tracks with zero plays, but not "stale" ones.
- Rekordbox: not possible, it does not store last played date.
- Lexicon: a Last Played rule set to before a date six months back. -
Tracks missing cues. Neither engine filters on cue points. Lexicon's smartlist editor has a Cue Points field, so a "needs prep" smartlist is one rule away. Use the rule "Cue points equals 0" to find any track without cues.
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Missing files. Not a crate you play from, but the one that saves a gig. Lexicon's File Missing rule lists every track whose file is gone. Neither Serato nor Rekordbox offers this as a rule.
Bonus for Lexicon users: the Match regular expression rule lets you write something like /techno|house/i to catch both genres in any capitalisation with a single rule. Expressions longer than 100 characters do not match anything, so keep them short.
The portability problem
Here is the part that bites when you switch apps or run two: Serato cannot read Rekordbox's rules and Rekordbox cannot read Serato's. Every smart crate you built has to be rebuilt by hand, and some cannot be rebuilt at all because the target app lacks the field.
Lexicon sits in the middle. Smartlists are imported from your DJ app automatically during a Full Import, and the rules are converted into Lexicon rules you can open with Edit smartlist. When you sync back out, Lexicon converts them to the target app's format. A few things to know:
- Compatibility icons. At the top of the smartlist editor, next to Compatibility, there is an icon for Rekordbox, Serato DJ, Traktor Pro, VirtualDJ, Engine DJ and djay Pro. Coloured means the smartlist syncs as a real smart playlist. Red means that app does not support one of your rules.
- Red is not a dead end. If a rule does not exist in the target app, the smartlist is synced as a normal playlist with the matching tracks. You keep the right tracks, it just will not update itself inside the DJ app until you sync again.
- Rekordbox tags. Only the Has all these tags and Has none of these tags rules convert to Rekordbox 6/7 My Tag conditions (as contains and does not contain).
- Rekordbox 5 cannot exchange intelligent playlists through XML at all, so smartlists arrive there as normal playlists.
The practical workflow: build the smart logic once in Lexicon, keep the compatibility icon in mind, and use the Field Mapper for anything your DJ app lacks.
Where to go next
If you want more rule ideas built purely in Lexicon, read Smart Playlists in Lexicon: 12 Recipes You Can Steal Today. And if you need a pile of crates at once, the Smartlist Generator (under Utility ➡ Smartlist Generator) creates one smartlist per artist, genre, label, custom tag, decade or BPM range in a single pass.
