Gmail filters for DJ promos, a five-minute setup

Most promos still arrive by email: a WAV attached, a SoundCloud link in the body, a pool's weekly mailer, a label's "for your consideration". Left in your main inbox they compete with everything else and lose. Filtered into one label, they become a queue you can review in one sitting, and a queue The Cut can read.

This takes about five minutes in Gmail's settings. The same idea works in any mail client with rules; the search operators below are Gmail's.

1. Make the label

Gmail, Settings, Labels, Create new label. Call it Promos. Everything below lands here.

2. The attachment filter

This one catches the majority. In the search box at the top of Gmail, open the filter options (the sliders icon), or paste this into the search field and choose "Create filter":

has:attachment (filename:mp3 OR filename:wav OR filename:aiff OR filename:aif OR filename:flac OR filename:m4a) -from:me

Then tick:

• Skip the Inbox (Archive it)
• Apply the label: Promos
• Never send it to Spam

The -from:me keeps your own outgoing tracks out of the queue. Never send it to Spam matters more than it looks: label mailers are exactly the kind of bulk mail that Gmail's spam filter learns to hate, and a promo in spam is a promo you never heard.

3. The link filter

Plenty of promos arrive with no attachment at all, just a link. Second filter:

(soundcloud.com OR wetransfer.com OR dropbox.com OR drive.google.com OR we.tl) (promo OR demo OR premiere OR unreleased OR "for your consideration" OR "new release") -from:me

Same actions: skip the inbox, label Promos, never spam. The word list on the right is what stops a friend's Dropbox link to holiday photos from ending up in the queue. Add the words your own promos tend to use.

4. The sender filter

The pools and labels you already know do not need to pass a keyword test. Third filter, with the senders that matter to you:

from:(bpmsupreme.com OR djcity.com OR zipdj.com OR yourfavouritelabel.com)

Add to this list whenever a new source turns up. This is also where you keep the good small labels whose subject lines never say "promo".

5. Connect the label to The Cut

Now the label is a queue, and The Cut can read it as a source.

1. In Gmail, Settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP, make sure IMAP is enabled.
2. Create an app password for The Cut (Google account, Security, App passwords). Gmail does not accept your normal password over IMAP, and the page only appears once 2-Step Verification is on.
3. In The Cut, go to Settings, Sources, Add Source, choose IMAP, enter your Gmail address and the app password, tap Test Connection, then Add.
4. Open the source again from Settings, Sources, and set the folder it scans to Promos. A Gmail label is a folder as far as IMAP is concerned.

The full walkthrough is in How do I add my Gmail account as an IMAP source?. From then on, every attachment and every SoundCloud link that lands in Promos shows up in your inbox in The Cut, with the sender's name and the subject, ready to audition. Accept a track and it downloads itself; reject it and it is gone.

Small things that help

• Mark as read. If the unread badge on Promos bothers you, add "Mark as read" to the filters. The Cut does not care whether Gmail thinks a message is read.
• Big WAVs. larger:10M in a filter catches anything with a serious attachment even when the filename is odd.
• Check spam monthly. Even with "never send to spam", something new will land there. A thirty-second scan once a month is enough.
• One label. Resist Promos/Pending, Promos/House, Promos/Maybe. The sorting happens after you listen, not before, and it happens in the app. Filters, ratings and a listening session do the rest.
• Give producers a link instead. The more demos that arrive through a Sendbox rather than email, the fewer filters you need. A Sendbox demo arrives with the artist, the title and a verified address already attached, and nothing to download.