How to keep track of every track you hear as a DJ
Capture each track the moment you hear it, send every capture to one inbox, and sort it into keep or reject before you shop. A four-step system.
On this page
- Why tracks get lost between hearing and buying
- Step 1: capture the track the moment you hear it
- Use Recognize Music in Control Center
- Use the Shazam app and Auto Shazam
- Save the link when the track is already on your screen
- Note what recognition can't catch
- Step 2: send every capture to one inbox
- Step 3: sort the inbox before you buy
- Step 4: buy from the keep list and mark what you bought
- How to catch up on years of old Shazams
- Doing this with CatchIt!
- A weekly routine you can keep
To keep track of every track you hear as a DJ, run the same four steps every time. First, capture the track the moment you hear it, with one tap. Second, collect every capture in one inbox, whatever it came from. Third, sort that inbox on a fixed schedule into keep or reject. Fourth, buy from the keep list and mark what you've bought. The tools matter less than doing it the same way every time. Most lost tracks fall through the gap between hearing something good and sitting down to dig.
Why tracks get lost between hearing and buying
Tracks rarely get lost because you failed to identify them. They get lost afterwards. A Shazam ends up in one app, a link a friend sent sits in a chat, a set you liked has its tracklist on a website, and a chart you meant to check stays in a browser tab. A week later, each source holds a few tracks you wanted, and none of them tells you which ones you've already listened to properly.
Will Lynch, writing for Pioneer DJ about managing music, describes the problem: "It's all too easy to find loads of new stuff you like and immediately lose track of it". His answer is to have "a way of processing your new finds that happens the same way every time". The rest of this guide is one way to build that process for the stretch before tracks reach your DJ software.
Step 1: capture the track the moment you hear it
The capture step has one job: get the track's identity out of the room and into a list before the moment passes. Speed beats detail here. You can add context later.
Use Recognize Music in Control Center
On an iPhone or iPad, open Control Center, tap the Add Controls button, then add Recognize Music. From then on, one tap in Control Center identifies what's playing, without opening an app first. To see what you've identified, touch and hold the Recognize Music button and tap History. On a Mac, the same control can sit in Control Center or the menu bar. Shazam in Control Center also covers the Lock Screen and the Action button.
Siri does the same job hands-free: ask "what is this song" and it uses Shazam's recognition, with no Shazam app needed. If your Apple devices share one Apple Account, whatever Siri identifies also shows up in the Recognize Music history.
Use the Shazam app and Auto Shazam
The Shazam app adds a Library: one place for the songs you identify in the app and, when sync is on, the ones you identify with Recognize Music and Siri on your other Apple devices. For that sync, Apple requires the same Apple Account on every device, two-factor authentication, and iCloud Sync turned on in the Shazam app's settings. If songs still don't appear everywhere, why your Shazam history isn't showing walks through the checks.
Two app features matter in a club or a record shop:
- Auto Shazam. Touch and hold the Shazam button and the app keeps trying to identify songs until you turn it off. On iPhone and iPad, songs found this way are grouped by date in the Library, which helps when you want to reconstruct a night afterwards.
- Offline identification. Without a connection, the app still creates a digital fingerprint of the audio and tries to identify the song once your device is online again. Basements with no signal don't have to cost you the track.
Save the link when the track is already on your screen
Plenty of good tracks don't reach you through a speaker: a link in a group chat, a track in someone's playlist, a video a friend posts. For these, skip recognition and save the link itself, from the app's share sheet or by copying it. A link is more precise than a recognition result, because it points at the exact version, remix or edit.
Note what recognition can't catch
Recognition only knows what's in its database. Unreleased edits, promos and white labels often won't match. When that happens, write down what you can: the DJ, the event or the set, and roughly when the track played. With that, you can find the track later in the set's tracklist or by asking around. An unidentified track with context is still a lead. An unidentified track with no notes is gone. How DJs save tracks on the go compares notes, screenshots and saved links for those moments.
Step 2: send every capture to one inbox
Capturing is solved. The harder part is that captures land in different places. A workable system picks one inbox and routes everything into it: recognition results, saved links, tracks from tracklists and charts, recommendations.
The inbox can be simple. These are the common options and the trade-offs to know about:
| Where you collect | Works well for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Shazam Library | Everything you identify by ear, on all your Apple devices once iCloud sync is on | Links, tracklists and charts don't go there, and it has no keep or reject state |
| A "My Shazam Tracks" playlist in Apple Music or Spotify | Hearing full tracks: the Shazam app can add each identified song to this playlist automatically | Only covers that one streaming service, and still no record of what you've judged |
| A notes app or spreadsheet | Anything, including half-identified tracks and context notes | Manual typing, and nothing to listen to from the list itself |
| A store cart or wishlist | Tracks you've already decided to buy at that store | Tied to one store, and it fills up with tracks you never re-listened to |
For the streaming-playlist route, connect Shazam to Apple Music or Spotify in the Shazam app's settings and turn on library sync. From then on, each song you identify is added to a playlist called My Shazam Tracks in that service.
Whichever inbox you choose, the rule is the same: if a track matters, it goes into the inbox, and nowhere else counts. Tracks you leave in chats, tabs and carts are the ones you lose.
Step 3: sort the inbox before you buy
An inbox only helps if you empty it. Sorting means listening to each new track once with intent and making one decision: keep it for your crate, or reject it. Avoid a third "maybe" pile. A maybe pile turns into a second inbox nobody empties.
Practical rules that keep sorting fast:
- Listen in context. Judge a track on a decent system or good headphones, at the point where it would work in a set, not on a phone speaker.
- Decide once. When a track you rejected shows up again from another source, the earlier decision should still be visible, so you don't judge it twice.
- Sort on a schedule. Pick a fixed slot and keep it. Lynch's warning about processing music applies here too: "Leave it too long and your crate will get chaotic and overgrown."
What comes out of sorting is your keep list: tracks you've listened to and still want. That list, not the inbox, is your shopping list.
Step 4: buy from the keep list and mark what you bought
When you shop, work from the keep list. Search each store by artist and title, buy the version you want, and mark the track as bought right away. A keep list that also holds tracks you already own becomes useless fast. You end up re-checking your library before every purchase.
Once a track is bought, it leaves this system and enters your library routine: import it into your DJ software, set the beat grid and cue points, and file it into playlists. Keeping capture and sorting separate from library management is deliberate. Your DJ software stays limited to music you own and have chosen, not everything you once heard.
How to catch up on years of old Shazams
If you've used Shazam for years, your Library probably holds hundreds of tracks you never went back to. Don't try to sort it all at once. Treat it as one more source:
- Get the list out of Shazam. If you've synced Shazam with Apple Music or Spotify, the My Shazam Tracks playlist already holds it. If not, the data request at shazam.com/privacy returns your Shazam data by email (see How to export your Shazam history).
- Move that list into your inbox.
- Sort it in batches, newest first. Recent finds are the most likely to still fit your sound.
After the first pass, only new captures reach the inbox, and the backlog stays at zero.
Doing this with CatchIt!
CatchIt! is a Mac app with a free iOS companion. It covers the four steps up to the point where tracks reach your DJ software: you capture on the phone, sort and shop on the Mac, and changes sync between the two within seconds. It isn't a plugin for Rekordbox or Serato, and there's no Windows version.
- Capture. The CatchIt! iOS app has its own Shazam button, plus a Shortcut that pairs Apple's Recognize Music with the Add to CatchIt! action. You can pin the Shortcut to the Home Screen, the Lock Screen or Control Center. The Save to CatchIt! share extension takes Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and SoundCloud track links from any app. Offline captures queue on the phone and upload once you're back online. On the Mac, you can paste or drop a track link into the window. See Capturing tracks.
- One inbox. Captures from the phone land in the Mac's Inbox under Mobile Shazams. The same Inbox takes tracklists from 1001tracklists, TrackID.net, set79 and Djooni, Spotify and Apple Music playlists, followed Beatport charts and whole SoundCloud or Mixcloud sets. See Importing tracklists.
- Sorting. In the Inbox, Return keeps a track (green) and Space rejects it (red), then moves on to the next one. When a track you've already judged turns up from another source, its previous decision shows with it. See Core concepts.
- Buying. Kept tracks collect in the Wishlist, the Greens. Each row has Bandcamp, Beatport, YouTube and Google search links, a copy action that puts a clean "Title Artist" line on the clipboard for any store's search, and a Done flag to mark what you've bought.
- Old Shazams. CatchIt! doesn't import your Shazam history automatically. If your Shazams sync to a My Shazam Tracks playlist on Apple Music or Spotify, you can import that playlist like any other, up to 500 tracks at a time. See Importing tracklists.
A weekly routine you can keep
The whole system fits on a checklist:
- While you're out: capture with one tap, and save links instead of screenshots.
- When recognition fails: note the DJ, the set and the time.
- Once a week: move anything stray (chat links, tabs, tracklists) into the inbox.
- In the same session: sort the inbox to zero, keep or reject.
- Before you shop: buy from the keep list and mark each purchase.
- After you shop: import, grid and file the new tracks in your DJ software.
For the terms used in this guide, see the glossary. For a first setup, see Getting started.
Frequently asked questions
- What's the fastest way to identify a track while you're out?
- On an iPhone, put Recognize Music in Control Center once; after that, a single tap from any screen names the track. You don't have to open an app, and Siri can do the same hands-free. Both use Shazam's recognition, and the results show up in your Recognize Music history.
- Does Shazam keep a history of the songs you identify?
- Yes. The Shazam app keeps identified songs in its Library, including songs found with Recognize Music and Siri on your other Apple devices, as long as they use the same Apple Account with iCloud sync on. Without the app, touch and hold the Recognize Music control and tap History.
- Can Shazam identify a track without an internet connection?
- According to Apple Support, the Shazam app on iPhone and iPad creates a digital fingerprint while you're offline and tries to identify the song the next time your device is online.
- How often should you go through the tracks you've saved?
- Often enough that one sitting clears the list. A fixed slot, such as once a week before you shop, keeps the backlog from growing past the point where you'll actually listen to it.
- Is a streaming playlist enough to keep track of new music?
- It works for tracks you identify with Shazam or save in that one app. It gets harder once tracks also come from tracklists, links from friends and charts. A playlist also has no keep or reject state, so you can't tell what you've already judged.