The Track ID debate: is tracklist secrecy ever justified?

Having an unreleased record in your bag is a flex and can, of course, be a big boost for producers when the release eventually sees the light of day. This, in theory, sounds like the horizon everyone wants to be moving towards. But it doesn’t operate that way in all corners of the larger dance music scene. Often the tracks being identified are old ’90s gems that point to a structural problem at play with that redistribution of wealth. These tunes aren’t widely available on platforms like Bandcamp or Beatport and, instead, drive the secondary market on Discogs into a tailspin.

“Contemporary society prizes scarcity and consumption,” the DJ and producer Ben Block, who started running MixesDB 2 after the original site went down, explains. “This impacts dance music just like it does any other industry, and has made rare vinyl records into highly commoditised, speculative items. Furthermore, in tightly-contained scenes (like underground dance music), ownership of these objects can confer a type of status and knowledge on the owner.”

Block is describing how sharing IDs doesn’t necessarily drive sharing revenue. Instead, it continues to shore up the boundaries around who can afford access to music. Cooke sees the exact same problem at play: “My friends and I often joke that if a record’s price skyrockets, it’s probably because [Francesco] Del Garda dropped it at Houghton, and it ended up on the Identification of Music group. Unfortunately, this isn’t far from the reality of the record game today. The increased visibility can make it much harder to get your hands on those golden records.”

Mike Roter AKA DJ Bigos, voices a similar frustration, describing his outrage at seeing Joy Orbison’s ‘Flight FM’ — released earlier this year — fetching over £100 after getting some initial airtime by big name DJs. Roter’s insight is particularly valuable as he is a key node of this particular world. “DJ Bigos” is a familiar name to anyone who has listened to a SoundCloud mix in the past decade. His name is almost always in the comments, providing detailed tracklists of the mix you’re listening to.