From Rominimal Playlist to DJ Set
so you’ve been hanging out in the rominimal.club telegram group, listening to the live stream, and you keep hearing tracks that would fit perfectly into a set. good news — there’s a built-in way to turn that passive listening into an actual rominimal playlist you can pull up next time you’re behind the decks.
the whole thing works through track rating and a simple export. no accounts to create, no apps to install. just telegram and a bot. here’s how it fits together.
How the Rating System Works
every track that plays through the rominimal.club mix can be rated by anyone in the group. you’re not “liking” tracks in some vague social media way — you’re tagging them by energy level. that distinction matters when you’re building rominimal dj sets, because energy mapping is the actual skeleton of any decent mix.
the system uses five levels:
- #v1 — ambient, deep, barely-there grooves. the kind of thing you’d open a 4am set with, or layer under a long blend.
- #v2 — low energy but moving. tension without release. good for early hours or cooldown stretches.
- #v3 — mid-range. the workhorse zone. most tracks in a typical rominimal set live here.
- #v4 — driving. the room’s locked in and you’re pushing it. peak-adjacent.
- #v5 — full intensity. the track that makes someone grab their friend’s arm and point at the speakers.
when you rate a track, the bot confirms it with something like: You #voted [5] #v5 for 'Kirik – MR002#1 [Memory Remains]'
that confirmation isn’t just feedback — it’s a searchable tag. more on that in a second.
Rating as You Listen
the best way to build a rominimal playlist through this system is to just rate consistently while you listen. don’t overthink it. you’re not writing a review. you’re making a gut call about where this track sits on the energy curve.
over a few weeks of regular listening, you’ll end up with dozens — maybe hundreds — of rated tracks. each one stamped with your own energy perception. that’s the raw material for your sets.
what makes this different from just saving tracks to a folder is the energy metadata. when you sit down to prep a set, you’re not scrolling through an undifferentiated pile of “tracks i liked.” you’ve already done the sorting work in real time, while the music was fresh in your ears.
Filtering Your Rated Tracks
here’s where telegram’s built-in tag search becomes genuinely useful for set prep.
tap on any of these hashtags in the group and telegram pulls up every matching message:
- #voted — everything you’ve ever rated. your full rominimal playlist in one scroll.
- #v1 through #v5 — filtered by energy level.
so if you’re prepping a warm-up set, you pull up your #v1 and #v2 tags. planning something for peak time? #v4 and #v5. building a long-form mix that journeys through the whole range? start at #v1, work up, bring it back down.
you’re essentially building sub-playlists without any extra effort. the organization happened naturally while you were just listening and reacting to music. that’s the whole point — the curation is embedded in the listening, not bolted on after the fact.
Exporting Your Rominimal Playlist
once you’ve built up a solid collection of rated tracks, you can pull everything out as a structured file. open a conversation with @xFadeBot on telegram and type /export.
the bot sends back your complete ratings history in JSON format. track names, artist info, your energy-level tags, timestamps — everything you need to work with the data outside of telegram.
from there, you can import the data into your DJ software, build crates sorted by energy level, or just keep it as a reference list when you’re digging for tracks to buy. the playlist export page goes deeper into the format and what you can do with the output.
the file is yours. no lock-in, no platform dependency. if you want to share it with another DJ, just send them the JSON.
Building a Set from Your Ratings
let’s say you’ve got a two-hour slot. here’s one way to approach it using your exported rominimal playlist.
first 30 minutes — pull from your #v1 and #v2 tracks. you’re setting mood, not chasing energy. these are the tracks that breathe, that give people space to arrive and settle in. in rominimal dj sets this opening stretch is everything — it’s where you establish trust with the room.
middle hour — this is #v3 territory with occasional dips into #v2 and pushes toward #v4. the groove is constant but the textures shift. you’re telling a story through micro-variations, not big dramatic swings. rominimal rewards patience here. a subtle hi-hat change or a new percussive layer can move the energy more than any drop would.
last 30 minutes — bring in your #v4 and #v5 selections for the peak, then ease back to #v3 or #v2 to close. the descent matters as much as the climb.
this isn’t a formula. it’s a starting point. the energy tags give you a map, but the actual set comes from knowing the tracks — their textures, their grooves, how they sit against each other in a mix. the rating system just makes the logistics easier so you can focus on the musical decisions. for the mixing techniques themselves — long blends, three-deck layering, tempo management — the rominimal DJ mixing guide covers the craft side.
Why Energy Tagging Beats Generic Playlists
most playlist systems treat every saved track the same. a heart icon or a star doesn’t tell you anything about context. when you’re standing in front of a crowd at 2am, “tracks i liked” isn’t a useful category.
energy-level tagging solves that. every track in your collection already has a functional label attached to it. you rated it in context — while it was playing, while you were feeling it. that in-the-moment assessment is more reliable than anything you’d assign retroactively while scrolling through a library.
it also means your rominimal playlist grows organically. you don’t have to set aside time for “playlist curation sessions.” the curation happens every time you listen. rate a few tracks today, a few more tomorrow. over time, you’ve got a deep, well-organized library that reflects your actual taste and energy mapping instincts.
Discovering Tracks You’d Never Find Otherwise
the other thing worth mentioning is the discovery angle. the tracks playing through rominimal.club aren’t algorithm-generated recommendations. they’re drawn from a catalog that spans the full depth of the scene — vinyl-only releases, white labels, unreleased edits, deep cuts from labels like [a:rpia:r], Metereze, Curtea Veche, and UVAR. browse the top tracks and artists page to get a sense of the range.
for DJs, this is where it gets interesting. you’re not just building a rominimal playlist from the same tracks everyone else has. you’re finding material that genuinely differentiates your sets. the kind of tracks that make another DJ ask “what was that?” after your slot.
rate what catches your ear. export it. dig into the artists and labels. buy the ones that stick with you. that cycle — listen, rate, export, buy, play — is the simplest path from discovery to performance.
support the artists and buy their tracks.
The rominimal artist directory maps every name in the scene. The labels guide covers the imprints behind the records worth digging for.
