Can some people comment on record pools? I don’t use them and I am unfamiliar with the good/popular ones…
I use beatport (through finding artists and branching out from there,) word of mouth and a thread on Bodybuilding.com.
then buy them on beatport after a week of sitting in my cart
I always have Shazam on my homescreen on my Android. Anytime I hear a dope song, I immediately try to get the tag. It seems very simple, but if you are constantly doing this for awesome tracks you hear, you will quickly find your library growing with some serious gems!
i love beatport and visit the site daily and fill my cart with tunes that ill listen to over and over on sample before buying usually once i can find a discount code on the web 
soundcloud mixes are excellent to find tracks within mixes then onto beatport to buy
mixmag mixes on fridays on their live youtube stream also display track listings so i hunt them down too 
djcity is good for the content thats more commercial and club oriented. i pool money together with a few friends to get access to the shared account. its a record pool for a record pool.
but if I’m really searching for music i’ll listen to podcasts. These are some of my favorites right now;
deephousecat
defected in the house
and cadencia on DI
Also follow all the producers, acts, DJ’s, labels etc on Twitter - and look at who they follow.
I know hardwax.com features a lot of rereleases from the 70s-90s. Check out the Disco and House sections for some good classic stuff.
I really like SoundCloud the best for discovering tunes & rare bootlegs. I don’t really like to follow the Top10 or 100 charts on sites like beatport, etc. – Every DJ has access to those tracks (not saying that the music is bad).
I’d rather be known for a unique sound than someone who has all the current hits. That being said, it’s great to see what’s charting so you can find edits/bootlegs of those tracks, or create your own. If the tunes aren’t free to download on SoundCloud, Beatport & Juno Records have been my go-to places to purchase music. I’m also really liking the new Beatport application for Mac.
If you could put www.songdrop.me on there that would be great, a free song is sent to your email once a week from a new artist, were planning on growing into a bigger tool for music discovery. Thanks!
sometimes I’ll scroll through http://www.1001tracklists.com they have lists of most the popular sets out now and then you can find the songs and try and track them down.
I won’t lie I was never a huge fan of the old beatport setup, but with the new beatport pro app i listen there a lot very easy to scroll through songs like listening to records and skip tracks ect.
Why did you post a live set?
The same standard sites everyone uses. Mostly Beatport and Trackidown. My favorite search method is finding a track i like in a podcast or mix then going to the links or “other people purchased” links. I also scope certain labels a lot. Finally, I am lucky enough to be friends with a top producer/dj that sends me all his new releases for his label. Feel quite fortunate on that one and love to support my friend when I can.
[quote=“keithace, post:1, topic:69620, username:keithace”]
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Tracks sit in my cart for a few days and then gone through again and again until I am convinced I have the best tracks for my dollars. (the marginal ones go to my hold bin)
rinse repeat…
[/quote]I used to follow this process, but have recently switched to a different one, which I’m enjoying a lot more.
My problem with using your method is that I tend to wind up with boring tracks. One limitation is that I get hung up on aiming for a cohesive idea for ‘my sound’, so I decline to add tracks to my cart that wouldn’t fit well together. This makes the harvesting process seem more arduous to me - a lot of time is spent exposing myself to ‘bad music’, and even most of the good stuff gets rejected. Secondly, as I’m listening to the crate over and over for quality control, sometimes I won’t be in the same mood as I was when I added the track, so I’ll inevitably delete or hold-bin the ones that are more mood-particular. I’ll end up with a weedy selection of nondescript, inoffensive tracks; not too cheesy, not too dark. Straight down the middle. Your mileage may vary.
So since I picked up mixing again a few months ago, I’ve been going by a new system. During the harvest, I add everything - everything - that sounds good to me. I pay no attention to genre, bpm, preconceived ideas about what my style is, whatever. As long as I think it’s good. I use beatport classic because I find it more responsive and I prefer the layout. When the cart gets full at 150 tracks, I head to beatport.pro, where I can move the entire lot to the hold bin after a cursory skim. I do this two or three times, until I have about 400 tracks in my hold bin.
From this point, I start listening through the bin, making connections and thinking of ideas for sets. Instead of adding tracks back to the crate, I write lists of songs on paper. I find that this forces me to really consider whether the track will fit into my original concept, or whether I’m just excited by the piece of music at that point in time - it seems stop me getting carried away. It also allows me to construct more than one set simultaneously - you can’t really do this when adding to a single cart in beatport.
I have three beatport accounts, so I can then add the tracks from my paper sets to their own crate and listen through for consistency. I’ll delete or hold-bin about 15% of the tracks, because they won’t fit in with the rest. It also means I can use coupons three times. Each 400 track harvest will itself yield about three or four purchases or ‘sets’. After this I’ll clear the lot and start afresh.
This method seems to make me feel more excited about shopping on beatport. I buy more extravagant and adventurous stuff, and I find my sets are more focussed and rounded. And sifting through 400 tracks that are all good and listening for ideas, is so much more enjoyable to me, than sifting through a crate listening for tracks that aren’t good. It also reduces the amount of critical thinking time during the period of exposure to ‘bad’ music (ie. stuff that’s not already in my crate/bin) because I make the decision about whether something fits or not at a later stage.
This brings me to one tip I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone: during the period of exposure to junk, keep the volume down. This helps me a lot. If I turn it up for a song that I like and forget to turn it down after, my musical appreciation module gets saturated much quicker and I end the harvesting session, feeling sick of all the crap music out there. Once you have a crate or hold bin full of tracks that are at least half decent, then you can start listening at higher volumes.
That’s YOUR workflow for finding records.
Mine works great for me. I find bomb tracks. I play bomb tracks.
I’m aware of that. Did it seem like I wasn’t?
I wrote a post about my experiences finding music because I thought someone might find it interesting and/or helpful. I wasn’t commenting on how your methods work for you, or on the destructive power of your bombs.
I used to find that I bought some seriously bad tracks until I started using the hold bin more gratuitously…
Yep, the ‘safety’ listen of the hold bin a day after I put songs in there has saved me hundreds of dollars. Its amazing how fickle I can be about some songs.
What a coincidence. I just got an email from Beatport saying they are introducing multiple carts into Beatport Pro. That gets rid of much of my long-winded process described above. I look forward to putting that to use, once the Pro site starts functioning at a normal speed. Right now it is a great deal slower than the Classic site for me.