How to find unreleased music before everyone else

Unreleased music reaches DJs through a small number of doors: the producer’s own promo list, the label’s promo run, private SoundCloud links passed between friends, radio shows that get dubs early, and the sets of DJs who are close to the producer. If you want to find unreleased music before everyone else, you get yourself near those doors. That means being on the mailing lists of the labels you actually play, following the right SoundCloud accounts, listening to the radio shows that break records, reading tracklists for the word “forthcoming”, and keeping a list of every ID you hear so you can pounce the day it is buyable.

None of that requires being famous. It requires being organised and polite, in that order.

How a track gets from a laptop to a shop

It helps to understand the cycle, because each stage has its own way in.

Dubplate. The producer finishes something and sends it to a handful of DJs they trust. In drum and bass and dubstep the word is still dubplate, in house and techno it is a dub or just a private link. No label, no date, often no final title. The only way to hear it is in a set.

Signed and forthcoming. A label picks it up. Now it has a home and, usually, a rough release window. Tracklists start showing “forthcoming on” next to it. The label’s inner circle of DJs gets it.

Promo. A few weeks before release, the label sends it to a wider promo list, usually through a promo service, in exchange for feedback and a chart placement. This is the biggest door for a working DJ, and it is not locked.

Pre-order and pre-release. Beatport pre-orders, Bandcamp pre-orders, Spotify pre-saves. The track is announced, the artwork is public, and the preview clips are up. Most people first hear it here.

Release. Out everywhere. From here it is a matter of buying it, covered in where DJs buy music.

The earlier in that cycle you want to be, the more it depends on relationships. The later, the more it depends on paying attention.

Get on promo lists

Labels want their records played before release. That is what promo is for. The mistake most DJs make is assuming the lists are closed.

• Label mailing lists. Almost every label has a newsletter, usually through Bandcamp or their own site. Some send promos to the whole list, most to a smaller group picked from it. Sign up to the ten labels you play most. Not a hundred, ten, so you actually read them.
• Promo services. Electronic labels mostly send pre-release tracks through a handful of promo platforms, and access is by invitation from the label. The way in is to ask. Email the label, say where you play, and link a recent mix. Small and mid-sized labels say yes far more often than people expect, because feedback and charts from working DJs are exactly what they want.
• Give feedback. Get on a list and never leave a comment or a chart and you get dropped. Two honest lines per promo keeps you on it.
• Artist lists. Producers run their own lists too, often a form linked from their bio. Those get the dubs before the label ever sees them.

No sets to link? Record a mix, put it on SoundCloud or Mixcloud, and use that. It is your business card.

SoundCloud private links and the accounts to follow

A lot of unreleased music sits on SoundCloud as a private track. The producer uploads it, sets it private, and shares the secret link with DJs. Those links leak into comments and Discord servers, and the producer often does not mind, because a private link doing the rounds is the point.

• Follow producers, not just labels. Producers post snippets, work-in-progress clips and occasionally a public upload that gets pulled a week later. Turn on notifications for the ones you care about.
• Read the descriptions and comments. A track marked “forthcoming” in its own description tells you the label and sometimes the date. The comments on a public upload are where people ask for the private link, and where the producer sometimes answers.
• Reposts. A label reposting a producer’s track usually means signed. A well-known DJ reposting something with fifty plays means they have been sent the dub.
• Ask, once, nicely. A short message saying you play out and would love to support the track gets a link surprisingly often. Asking twice gets you blocked.

A private link is a courtesy. Playing it out is fine, that is why you were sent it. Uploading it, ripping it into a public edit or sharing it on a forum is how you stop getting sent things.

Follow labels on Bandcamp and Beatport

This is the cheap, reliable end of the hunt.

Bandcamp. Following a label means you get an email the moment a release or pre-order goes up, and small labels put pre-orders up weeks ahead of the other shops, sometimes with one track available to download immediately. Following the artists you buy from does the same for their self-releases. The “supported by” list under a release is also a good way to find other labels: click through to the people who bought it and see what else they own.

Beatport. Follow the labels and artists you play and check the “coming soon” listings. Pre-orders often go up with previews a couple of weeks before the release date, so you can hear the full extended mix, decide, and pre-order. The preview is also what you use to confirm a track you heard as an ID is actually the one you thought.

Spotify pre-saves. More useful at the pop end than for club music, but a pre-save page carries the release date, which is the fact you actually want.

The catch with all three is volume. Follow enough labels and the emails become noise.

Radio rips, Discord and the sets themselves

Radio. Specialist radio is still where a lot of dubs get their first public airing. Rinse, NTS, the specialist BBC shows and the hundreds of online stations with a weekly genre show all have hosts who get sent things early. Listen with the tracklist open and note what gets played as a dub. Listeners rip the shows and share them, which is how “radio rip” versions of unreleased tunes circulate. Those rips are useful for identifying a track later and useless for playing out.

Discord. Most scenes have a few Discord servers where people share clips of IDs, post radio rips, and argue about what a track is. Producers hang out in some of them. Search for your genre plus Discord, join two or three, and mostly read. The good ones have an IDs channel where a clip gets named within the hour.

Tracklists. Tracklist sites and set recordings on SoundCloud and YouTube are the map. When you see “forthcoming” next to a track, you know it is signed, and the label name tells you which pre-order page to watch. When you see the same “ID” in several DJs’ sets over a couple of months, it is being road-tested and is probably coming. The glossary covers the tracklist vocabulary, and what ID means in a DJ set explains how those unknowns eventually get names.

Comments under sets. Under any big set on YouTube or SoundCloud, someone has already asked “ID at 34:10?” and, often, someone has answered. Read down before you ask.

Keep a list, and keep checking it

Most of the unreleased music you hear will come out eventually. The reason DJs miss it is not that they never found it. It is that they heard it in March, wrote “ID at Fabric” in a notes app, and never went back.

The habit that separates deep crates from everyone else is a list of every ID you are waiting on, with the artist and label if known and the clip if not, checked against the shops on a schedule. Every week or two, search each one on Beatport and Bandcamp and try the fingerprint on the clip again, because a track Shazam could not match in March is matched in September once it is in the database.

Doing that by hand for forty IDs is a chore, which is why most people stop. ID Crate’s crate does the checking for you: add an ID with whatever you know, and it is re-scanned every day on Spotify, Apple Music, Beatport, Bandcamp and SoundCloud with fuzzy matching and remix-aware scoring, and you get an email or push notification when it lands, with a buy list waiting. If you know the label but not the track, a monitor on the label does the same job from the other direction.

Pitfalls

Fake uploads. A known unreleased ID attracts fakes: a YouTube upload with the right title and a different track underneath, or a SoundCloud upload from an account with no history. If the producer or label did not share it, be suspicious, and compare it with the clip you originally heard before you believe it.

Mislabelled bootlegs. A lot of “unreleased” music in circulation is an edit or bootleg by someone else, named after the original artist because that gets plays. It will never come out under that name because it cannot. If the only source is a download gate, it is almost certainly a bootleg.

Wrong titles. Working titles change. A dub called one thing in a tracklist can come out under another, with a different mix name, on a label nobody expected. This is why searching by exact title fails, and why fuzzy matching matters when you are checking.

Rips in the library. A radio rip or a phone recording is evidence, not a file you can play. Keep it in a separate folder for identifying the track later, and buy the real thing when it exists.

Leaks. Playing a leaked full-quality file out is the fastest way to lose the trust of a producer and a label, and that door closes permanently. Wait for the promo.

A weekly routine that works

• One evening a week, go through the label emails, the Bandcamp notifications, the Beatport coming soon pages and the Discord IDs channel. Anything out goes on the buy list. Anything not goes on the ID list with whatever you know.
• Listen to one radio show for your genre with the tracklist open.
• Send one short message: feedback on a promo, or a polite ask for a link.
• Check the ID list against the shops, or let something check it for you.

Do that for a few months and you will be hearing tracks before the people you used to hear them from. Not because you have better connections, but because you stopped losing what you had already found.