How Discogg Works

Quality

The quality badge shows the audio fidelity of the best variant available for a song. Discogg picks the highest-ranked format across all known variants (so a song with both a phone recording and an HQ rip shows HQ).

Lossless

Uncompressed audio (FLAC, WAV, AIFF). Studio-quality.

CDQ

CD-quality; high-bitrate MP3/AAC (typically 256–320 kbps).

HQ

High quality; compressed but clearly above average (128–192 kbps range).

LQ

Low quality; noticeably compressed or degraded.

Low

Very low quality; heavily degraded or poorly encoded.

Recording

Phone or live recording — not a studio-mixed file.

Unknown

Quality not yet determined.

Availability

The availability badge describes what portion of a song circulates in the community. Like quality, it reflects the best variant — a song with only a snippet and a full leak shows Full.

Full

Complete song, no missing sections.

OG File

Original untagged file straight from the source.

Tagged

Full song with a watermark identifying who leaked it.

Partial

Only part of the song is in circulation.

Snippet

A short preview clip, not the full track.

Vocals

Isolated vocal track without the backing beat.

Stem Bounce

A mix of individual instrument/vocal stems.

Beat

Instrumental only; no vocal recorded.

Rumored

Known to exist but unconfirmed — no file circulates yet.

Confirmed

Verified to exist but unavailable — no file circulates.

N/A

No availability information.

Shuffle play only queues songs with availability Full, OG File, or Tagged — the three highest ranks. Snippets, partials, stems, and rumored entries are excluded so you always get a complete listening experience.

Link Health

Each streaming link is periodically checked to see if it still resolves. The link health badge reflects the last known check result.

Working

The link resolved at the last check — good to play.

Unknown

A song with unknown-status links is still playable if the source host is reachable.

Dead

Confirmed unreachable at the last check; flagged for curator review.

Song Types

Community curators can tag songs with a type to highlight their significance.

Grail

Highly sought-after; a legendary or historically significant leak.

Best Of

A standout track from the artist's catalog.

Special

Noteworthy for a reason not captured by other tags.

Wanted

Confirmed to exist but actively sought by the community.

Snippet

Only a short clip is known to exist.

Freshness

The freshness icon on an artist page shows when their tracker sheet was last synced. Color indicates recency.

Green

Synced within the last 2 hours.

Orange

Synced 2–3 hours ago.

Red

Synced more than 3 hours ago (or never).

Hovering the icon shows the exact sync time and, if any, the number of dead links detected.

About

The landing tab for every artist. A compact header at the top shows the track count, total plays, and follower count — all updated live. Below that sits a biography section, era breakdown, and catalog stats sourced from community knowledge.

The Shufflebutton queues a randomized selection of the artist's Full, OG File, and Tagged songs — the three highest availability ranks — so you always get complete tracks, never ten-second snippets or partials. The more streamable songs an artist has, the bigger the shuffle pool.

The Changelog button opens a side-sheet showing every scrape change for that artist specifically — new additions, metadata edits, and removals — so you can see exactly what came in from the latest sync.

Discography

The full song catalog, organized exactly as the community tracker sheet arranges it — typically by era, section, or release period. An inline search box lets you find songs by name within the artist's catalog instantly.

The filter bar exposes six independent filters you can stack in any combination:

• Era — jump to a specific era or release period from the tracker sheet
• Quality — filter to songs at or above a specific fidelity level (Lossless, CDQ, HQ, …)
• Availability — filter by how much of the song is in circulation (Full, OG File, Partial, Snippet, …)
• Song Type — filter to tagged songs like Grails, Best Of, Wanted, or Specials
• Link — filter to only songs with working links, songs that have any link at all, or songs with no link
• Sort — reorder results by Name, Likes, Track Length, Quality, Availability, or Date (ascending or descending)

Only options that actually exist in the artist's catalog are shown — empty filter categories are hidden automatically. Click any song row to open its detail page; click the play button to start it immediately.

Analytics

Rich play-count and catalog stats for the artist, with a time-range toolbar spanning 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, 1 year, and all-time. Charts include:

• Total plays over time
• Top songs by play count and by likes
• Plays broken down by era
• Follower growth over time
• Link health distribution (working / dead / unknown across the catalog)
• Catalog growth and availability breakdown
• Listening party activity — concurrent listeners and join trends
• Top listeners leaderboard

All numbers reflect actual plays recorded on Discogg — not streaming-service figures.

Playlists

A feed of user-created playlists that include songs from this artist. Browse what the community has curated, follow playlists you like, and jump straight into playing them. Public playlists from all users appear here — a good way to discover how other people arrange an artist's catalog.

Listening Party

A real-time synchronized listening room for this artist. Everyone in the room hears the same track at the same moment — playback is clock-synchronized across all connected clients, not just "start at the same time."

Members voteon the next song from a shared candidate queue; when voting closes, the majority pick plays automatically. If votes are tied, one is picked at random. The member list shows who's currently in the room. You need to be logged in to join a party; browsing and seeing the current listener count is open to everyone.

Search

Press ⌘K (or Ctrl+K on Windows/Linux) to open the global search palette from anywhere in the app. It searches artists, songs, and users in real time. Results are grouped — artist results navigate to the artist page, song results navigate to the song detail page, user results navigate to their profile. The search button in the nav bar opens the same palette.

Global Changelogs

The Changelogspage shows a feed of every change made across all artist catalogs — new songs added, metadata updates, and entries removed — since the last scrape. Filter by artist or date range to focus on what's relevant to you. Each entry links back to the affected artist or song. Unlike the per-artist changelog side-sheet, the global feed covers all artists at once.

Player & Queue

A persistent player bar sits at the bottom of every page so your queue never disappears mid-browse. Click any song row to start playing it. Songs are added to the queue when you play from a discography, shuffle an artist, or start a playlist. Controls include shuffle, repeat (none / one / all), seek, and volume. Everything is also controllable via keyboard shortcuts — see the Hotkeys section below.

Like & Follow

Like individual songs with the heart icon next to any track in the catalog or on a song detail page. Follow artists with the Follow button on their About tab. Your liked songs and followed artists are saved to your profile — they're visible on your public page and accessible from your account at any time. Counts update live without a page reload.

Playlists

Create personal playlists from any song's context menu or from your profile. Give it a name, choose public or private, and add or reorder songs whenever you like. Public playlists are browsable at your profile URL and shareable with anyone. Playlists can be played from top to bottom or shuffled.

Your Profile

Every account has a public profile page at /u/{username}. It shows your avatar, bio, liked songs, followed artists, and public playlists. Edit your display name, username, bio, and social links from Settings → Profile. Your username appears in your profile URL, so changing it updates the link.

Song Detail Pages

Every song has its own page at /{artist}/{song}. It lists all known variants (different quality levels or source versions of the same song), contributor credits, and every streaming link with its current health status. The report button flags a broken or infringing link directly — the fastest path for individual links.

Player Controls

These shortcuts work anywhere on the page as long as your cursor is not inside a text field.

Space

Play / Pause

N

Next track

P

Previous track

←

Seek back 10s

→

Seek forward 10s

↑

Volume up

↓

Volume down

M

Mute / Unmute

S

Toggle shuffle

R

Cycle repeat

App Controls

D

Toggle dark mode

⌘/Ctrl+K

Open search

Last.fm

Connect your Last.fm account to automatically scrobble every track you play on Discogg. Once linked, plays are submitted to Last.fm in real time — a Now Playingupdate fires when a track starts and a full scrobble is submitted once you've listened past the threshold. The era name is passed as the album field so scrobbles group correctly in your Last.fm history.

To connect: go to Settings → Connections, click Connect Last.fm, and authorize Discogg on Last.fm's site. You'll be redirected back automatically. To disconnect, click Disconnect on the same page — scrobbling stops immediately.

Discord

Link your Discord account to display your Discord username on your public Discogg profile. If you signed up using Discord OAuth, your account is linked automatically — no extra steps needed. You can also link a Discord account on top of an email/password sign-in from Settings → Connections.

Tracker Sheets

The community maintains Google Sheets — called tracker sheets— that catalog an artist's known songs: released, unreleased, leaked, OG files, and more. Each sheet is independently maintained and has its own layout and conventions. Discogg ingests these sheets and normalizes them into a canonical database schema.

The Scrape Pipeline

Discogg automatically re-scrapes each artist's tracker sheet roughly every 4–6 hours. The scheduler checks for due trackers every 5 minutes and staggers start times with a small random jitter (15s) to avoid hammering the Sheets API in bursts.

When a scrape completes, the result is run through a diff-and-classify step: new songs are added, changed metadata is updated, and removed rows are flagged — but never auto-deleted without a human review gate. The zero-false-rows bar means accuracy is enforced before any change is applied to the database.

Link Health Checks

Streaming links are checked daily at 02:00 UTC (cron 0 2 * * *) in batches of 100. A link marked Unknown has not been checked yet — it is not broken. External hosts sometimes change formats or require auth; dead links are flagged for curator review.

Covers

Song cover art is fetched automatically during ingestion when a cover URL is present in the tracker sheet. Discogg uses the community-provided image URL directly — no separate upload or hosting.

Community Attribution

Discogg exists because of the community researchers who maintain these tracker sheets. The platform is a reader and indexer, not an originator. Sheet credit belongs to the community editors who keep them up to date.

Audio Hosting

Discogg does not host, store, upload, or distribute any audio or media files. Every track is streamed directly from the original third-party source host. All recordings, artwork, and trademarks belong to their respective owners.

Takedowns & DMCA

If you are a rights holder and believe that content indexed by Discogg infringes your copyright, you can submit a takedown request via:

• The report button on any song page — the fastest path for individual links.
• The DMCA / Takedown Policy page for written notices and full takedown instructions.

Not Affiliated

Discogg is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with any artist, record label, distributor, or management company.