How DJs find new music: a weekly digging routine
DJs find new music by trawling a few steady sources, listening properly, then cutting hard before they buy. A weekly routine with sources and timings.
On this page
- The three stages of digging
- Where DJs find new music
- Store charts and new releases
- DJ charts
- Bandcamp feeds and fan collections
- Tracklists of sets you like
- Following labels, artists and remixers
- Curated shows, channels and writers
- What you hear out
- Promos
- A weekly digging routine
- Through the week: trawl and capture (about 10 minutes a day)
- One evening: listen (about 60 to 90 minutes)
- Shopping day: cull and buy (about 30 minutes)
- Straight after: file it
- How to keep digging from turning into a backlog
- Doing this with CatchIt!
- The routine on one card
DJs find new music by working a small set of sources on a regular schedule: store charts and new releases, DJ charts, Bandcamp feeds, tracklists of sets they like, curated shows and channels, label promos, and tracks they identify while out. What separates a good digger from a busy one isn't the number of sources. It's the routine: trawl widely, collect everything in one place, listen properly in a separate session, then cut hard before buying. Run that once a week and new music stops piling up.
The three stages of digging
Will Lynch, writing for Pioneer DJ about digging, splits the work into three practices: "Trawling, as you cast a wide net and pull in whatever seems interesting. Listening closely to the best things you found. And Culling, which is when you decide what to buy and what to cast aside." The point of separating them is that each needs a different frame of mind:
| Stage | Goal | Mindset | Typical place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trawl | Collect candidates | Fast, curious, uncritical | Phone, browser, out at a gig |
| Listen | Find what you actually love | Slow, undistracted | Headphones or monitors at home |
| Cull and buy | Spend on what you'll play | Strict | Desk, with your keep list |
Mixing the stages is the usual way digging goes wrong. Judging every track while you trawl makes you miss the rabbit holes. Trawling while you buy fills your cart with tracks you never listened to properly. For where the habit comes from, see what crate digging is and how it works online.
Where DJs find new music
You don't need every source below. Pick three or four that suit your genres and check them on a schedule.
Store charts and new releases
Download stores built for DJs publish charts and new-release pages by genre. Beatport's Top 100 and genre Top 100 charts "get updated every day, based on sales". Its Hype charts focus on smaller labels: Beatport describes Hype as a program for labels "with sales of less than $25,000 in the past 12 months" in eligible genres, with its own Hype Top 100 and genre charts. Traxsource's home page has its own Top 100 and DJ Top 10s, plus curated lists such as Essentials and Hidden Gems.
Charts are good for knowing what's moving. They're less good for finding music nobody else plays, because a sales chart rewards tracks that are already selling. Use them as one input, not the whole diet. Genre pages help here: finding underground house music shows how sub-genre and smaller-label charts get you away from the obvious. How to use Beatport charts covers which charts to follow and how to check them without drowning.
DJ charts
Stores also host charts made by DJs: short lists of tracks a named DJ is playing or recommends. On Beatport, DJ charts sit on their own page and are made from a DJ profile with a selection of tracks from the store. A DJ whose sets you like is a better filter than a sales ranking, so following a few people's charts is one of the best value habits in digging.
Bandcamp feeds and fan collections
On Bandcamp, following artists, labels and other fans fills your feed with new releases and purchases. Lynch rates a well-tuned feed as one of the best sources there is, and the tuning is the work: unfollow accounts whose purchases you always skip, and follow the fans whose collections keep surprising you. Bandcamp also shows who bought a release, and their collections are often the fastest route to music that never appears on a chart.
Bandcamp also runs Bandcamp Friday: on set Fridays during the year, it waives its revenue share so more of each sale goes to artists and labels. If you buy on Bandcamp, those days are a good moment to clear your keep list. The current year's dates are on Bandcamp's help page.
Tracklists of sets you like
A set you loved is a curated list of tracks someone else already dug for. Tracklist sites such as 1001tracklists collect tracklists for club and festival sets, and many radio shows and mixes on Mixcloud or SoundCloud include their own. The trick is to treat a tracklist as a lead: open each track, dig into its label and remixers, and only then decide. How to dig through DJ mixes and tracklists walks through it.
Following labels, artists and remixers
When you love a track, look sideways: the label's other releases, the artist's back catalog, the remixers, the people they collaborate with. Lynch suggests using Beatport's artist and label pages in this way, listing a discography by tracks and working from old to new. Discogs, which he calls "basically a Wikipedia for music", is useful for the same kind of hop from record to record, even if you don't buy vinyl. To hear about new releases from the labels and artists you find this way, keeping up with new releases covers the follow options and what each feed leaves out.
Curated shows, channels and writers
Radio shows, curated YouTube channels, newsletters and reviewers with taste close to yours do a first filter for you. Find two or three you trust and check them regularly.
What you hear out
Tracks you hear at gigs, in shops and on other people's speakers are often the ones you want most, and the ones you lose most easily. Make capture one tap, and put everything you capture in the same place as your other finds. How to keep track of every track you hear covers the capture system.
Promos
If you play regularly, labels and promoters may send you promos. Treat a promo pool like any other source: it goes into the same list, and it gets the same listening and the same cut.
A weekly digging routine
Here's a routine to start from, sized for a DJ who plays most weekends. The times are suggestions, not measurements: a reasonable starting point is about 10 minutes a day, one listening evening of 60 to 90 minutes and a 30-minute shopping slot. Change the days and times; keep the structure.
Through the week: trawl and capture (about 10 minutes a day)
- Check one or two sources a day: a chart one day, your Bandcamp feed the next, a DJ chart or a show after that.
- Save anything interesting into one list. Don't judge yet, and don't buy.
- When you hear a track out, capture it with one tap. Note the DJ and the time if recognition fails.
- Avoid what Lynch calls the "Million Tab Method": dozens of open browser tabs you mean to come back to.
One evening: listen (about 60 to 90 minutes)
- Open your list and listen to each new track properly, on headphones or monitors, with nothing else going on.
- For each track, make one decision: keep or reject.
- Skip ahead to the parts that matter in a club: the first drop, the main groove, the breakdown.
- Stop when the list is empty. If it never empties, you're trawling too much or listening too little.
- The weekly triage routine covers this session in detail: sorting the list, a fast and a slow pass, and what to do when it won't empty.
Shopping day: cull and buy (about 30 minutes)
- Go back through the week's keepers and cut again. Lynch's rule: "If any part of you thinks something might not be worth buying, don't buy it."
- Buy what survives, from the store that sells the version you want in the format you need.
- Mark each track as bought so it leaves your list.
Straight after: file it
- Import the new tracks into your DJ software, set grids and cues, and add them to playlists while you still remember why you bought them.
How to keep digging from turning into a backlog
One list, not ten. Charts, feeds, tracklists, links from friends and Shazams all go into the same place. If a track matters, it's in the list.
Decisions should stick. When a track you already rejected appears again from another source, you want to see the old verdict instead of judging it again.
Fixed slots beat bursts. A list you clear every week stays small enough to clear. Skip two weeks and the next session starts with a pile, so you skim instead of listening, and skimming is how good tracks get rejected by mistake.
Separate discovery from library. Your DJ software should hold music you've bought and chosen, not everything you once found interesting. Keep the pre-purchase list outside it. How to organize new music before it hits your DJ library covers that split.
Doing this with CatchIt!
CatchIt! is a Mac app with a free iOS companion. It's the one list in this routine: every source feeds the same Inbox, you decide keep or reject there, and your keepers become a shopping list.
- Trawl into one Inbox. Follow Beatport charts (Top 100, Hype 100, genre charts and DJ charts) and refresh them when you choose. Import tracklists from 1001tracklists, TrackID.net, set79 and Djooni, and Spotify or Apple Music playlists of up to 500 tracks. Paste a track link on the Mac, or share it from any app on the iPhone with Save to CatchIt!. See Importing tracklists.
- Capture what you hear out. The iOS app's Shazam button and Shortcut send identified tracks to the Mac's Inbox. See Capturing tracks.
- Listen and decide. In the Inbox, Return keeps a track (green) and Space rejects it (red), then moves to the next one. A track you've judged before shows its previous decision. Each row has Bandcamp, Beatport, YouTube and Google search links.
- Buy from the Greens. Kept tracks collect in the Wishlist with a copy action for a clean "Title Artist" line and a Done flag for what you've bought. CatchIt! doesn't sell music and isn't a Rekordbox or Serato plugin; it covers the stretch before your DJ software.
The routine on one card
- Daily, about 10 minutes (suggested): check one or two sources, save finds to one list, capture what you hear out.
- Weekly, one evening: listen properly, keep or reject every new track, empty the list.
- Weekly, shopping day: cut the keepers again, buy what survives, mark it bought.
- Right after: import, grid and file the new tracks.
Guides in this series:
- How to dig through DJ mixes and tracklists for new tracks
- How to use Beatport charts to find tracks
- A weekly new-music triage routine for DJs
For the terms used here, see the glossary, and for first steps in CatchIt!, Getting started.
Frequently asked questions
- Where do DJs find new music?
- In a handful of regular places. Store charts and new-release pages, DJ charts, Bandcamp feeds of artists, labels and fans they follow, tracklists of sets they like, curated channels and shows, promos from labels, and tracks they hear out and identify on the spot.
- How much time should a DJ spend digging each week?
- Enough to clear what you collect. A fixed weekly slot that empties your list of new finds is better than long irregular sessions that leave a backlog. Start with what you can sustain and adjust from there.
- How many tracks should a DJ buy each week?
- There's no right number, but fewer than you think. Will Lynch, writing for Pioneer DJ about digging, argues for cutting hard and buying on one fixed day each week, so you can see how much you're taking in.
- Do DJs use Spotify to find music?
- Many use streaming services for discovery, because recommendations and playlists surface a lot of music quickly. The catch is that a DJ usually needs to buy a file or use a DJ streaming service to play it, and the version on a consumer service isn't always the version DJ stores sell.
- How do you find music before it's popular?
- Follow small labels and artists directly, check new-release and early-support charts rather than only the overall top sellers, and dig sideways from tracks you love through their label, remixers and collaborators.