What is crate digging, and how does it work online?
Crate digging started in record shop bins. Online, the same idea means following credits, labels and tracklists. How it works, and where finds go after.
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Crate digging is searching deliberately through music to find records other people have missed. The name comes from the crates of vinyl that DJs and producers flipped through in record shops, at fairs and in other people's collections. Online, the crates are databases, stores, mixes and tracklists, and the method is the same: start from one record you like, follow its credits and connections, and keep notes on what turns up. What changes online is the volume. You can open fifty leads in an evening, so the real skill becomes keeping track of them.
Where the term comes from
The habit is older than the name. In a 2013 Collectors Weekly interview by Lisa Hix, hip-hop historian Dave "Davey D" Cook put it plainly: "The activity of crate-digging has been around since the inception of hip-hop in the early 1970s—because that's what you had to do." DJs were hunting for records with a usable drum break, and that meant searching obscure shops and other people's collections. Cook added: "I started hearing the term 'crate-digging' in the '90s."
From hip-hop the word spread to every scene where DJs pride themselves on finding music themselves: house, techno, disco, jungle, ambient. Today "digging" often means any deliberate search for tracks, physical or digital.
What makes something digging rather than browsing
The difference is intent. Browsing is accepting what a feed, chart or algorithm puts in front of you. Digging is choosing the next step yourself, usually by following a connection:
- Credits. Who remixed it, who produced it, who engineered it, who else they've worked with.
- Labels. What else the label released that year, and what it's releasing now.
- People. Which DJs played the track, and what else sits in their sets.
- Time and place. What came out in the same city, scene or year.
Each connection opens a new crate. A good dig often ends far from where it started, with a short list of tracks you'd never have been shown.
Browsing still has a place. Charts and recommendations are useful starting points, and a genre Top 100 can surface a label you'd never heard of. The dig starts when you follow that label instead of the chart.
Where DJs dig online
| Place | What it's good for | What to look at |
|---|---|---|
| Discogs | Credits, labels and full discographies, plus a marketplace for physical copies | Label pages, artist credits, the Wantlist |
| Bandcamp | Independent labels and artists, often with releases not sold elsewhere | Discover filters, label pages, fan collections |
| Tracklist sites | What DJs actually played, set by set | DJ pages, track pages, search filters |
| SoundCloud | Mixes, edits and early uploads | Search filters, DJ Sets results, reposts from people you follow |
| Store genre charts | What's selling now in a narrow genre | Labels and remixers you don't recognise |
Discogs
Discogs describes itself as a music database and a marketplace. For digging, the database is the main tool: every release page links to its label, artists and credits, so you can move from one record to everything around it. Its Wantlist keeps track of records you want, and the about page says Wantlister sends notifications when they become available in the marketplace. That's useful if you play vinyl. If you play files, the database is still a map of who made what.
Bandcamp
Plenty of independent labels and artists sell on Bandcamp, including releases you may not find in DJ download stores. Bandcamp's July 2026 update, posted by Charlie Pastuszenski, added a Discover filter for artists you follow, which you can then narrow "by tag, location, and format." Fan collections are another lead: people who bought a record you love have often bought others you'd like. Bandcamp's help center says the heart icon below the cover art adds a release to your wishlist, which lives in your collection. Our guide to the Bandcamp wishlist for DJs covers how far that list stretches.
Tracklist sites
Tracklists turn DJs into curators you can follow. 1001Tracklists' changelog lists an Advanced Search, added in 2022, that filters tracklists and tracks by date, genre and more, and in July 2026 the site merged its DJ and artist pages so tracklists and tracks sit on one page. How to use 1001Tracklists to dig goes through it, and digging through DJ mixes and tracklists covers the wider method.
SoundCloud
SoundCloud's search help lists filters by upload date, duration and tag, and a DJ Sets & Podcasts category for long-form uploads. It's a good place for edits, bootlegs and tracks that appear months before an official release. Finding DJ music on SoundCloud has the details.
Store genre charts
Store charts are browsing, but they're a useful jumping-off point. Beatport's genre Top 100 pages list each track's label, BPM and key. Ignore the top ten and look for a label or remixer you don't know, then dig into them. Genre guides like finding underground house music and finding new techno tracks show how.
A simple online digging session
There's no single correct method, but a session that holds together looks something like this:
- Pick one seed. A track you've recently loved, ideally one that isn't on every chart.
- Follow two or three connections. Its label's recent releases, its remixer's other work, a DJ who played it.
- Listen briefly, write down everything promising. Don't judge each track to the end. Note the artist, title and where you found it.
- Stop at a set point. A time limit or a page count, whatever suits you. Digging has no natural end, so you need one.
- Decide later. Come back to the list on another day with fresh ears, and keep or reject each track.
The pillar guide on how DJs find new music fits sessions like this into a weekly routine.
The longlist problem
Physical digging limits itself: you can only carry so many records to the counter. Online digging doesn't. A good evening on Discogs, Bandcamp and a few tracklists can produce dozens of candidates, spread across browser tabs, a store wishlist, a streaming playlist and a notes app.
That spread is where digging falls apart. Tabs get closed, wishlists in different stores don't talk to each other, and a week later you can't remember which tracks you'd already ruled out. Two habits help:
- One longlist. Every candidate from every source goes into the same place, with a note of where it came from.
- A separate decision step. The longlist isn't a shopping list. It's a queue of tracks waiting for a proper listen, ideally on a fixed day. How to decide which tracks to buy is a checklist for that listen.
Where CatchIt! fits
CatchIt! is a Mac app with a free iOS companion that gives a dig's longlist one home. Track links from Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and SoundCloud can be pasted or dropped into the Mac's Inbox, a 1001tracklists page can be imported as a whole tracklist, and you then keep (Return) or reject (Space) each track. It doesn't search Discogs or Bandcamp for you; the digging itself is still yours. Core concepts explains the Inbox and the keep-or-reject flow.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the term crate digging come from?
- From the crates of records DJs and producers searched through in shops, flea markets and other people's collections. In a 2013 Collectors Weekly interview, hip-hop historian Dave "Davey D" Cook traced the activity to the start of hip-hop in the early 1970s and said he started hearing the term itself in the 1990s.
- Is digital crate digging real digging?
- The tools differ but the habit is the same: looking deliberately, past what's put in front of you, and following leads from one record to the next. Searching a database by label and year or reading a DJ's tracklists is digging. Accepting whatever an app recommends is closer to browsing.
- Do you need vinyl to crate dig?
- No. Record shops and fairs are still good places to dig, and if you play digital files you can do most of your digging in online databases, stores, tracklists and mixes.
- How do I avoid losing what I find when digging?
- Write finds down as you go, in one list, and decide later. Digging produces far more candidates than you'll buy, so the list needs a regular clear-out where each track gets a keep or reject.
Sources
- Collectors Weekly (Lisa Hix): Digging for the Perfect Beat: Davey D on the Vinyl Roots of Hip-Hop
- Discogs: About Discogs
- SoundCloud Help: Search on SoundCloud
- 1001Tracklists: What's New
- Bandcamp Updates (Charlie Pastuszenski): Discover Improvements and Subsonic Implementation
- Bandcamp Help: How do I add music to my collection?
- Beatport: House Top 100