How to actually crate dig online

Digging online has the same shape as digging in a shop. You are not looking for a record you already know. You are looking for the conditions under which an unknown record reveals itself.

Start from a label, not a track

One record you love came out on a label that released eleven others. Most of those will be mediocre. Two will be better than the one you know. Labels are the highest-yield unit of digging because they encode a taste decision made by a human being who heard everything you did not.

Sort by the fewest owners

Discogs shows how many people have each release in their collection. Sorting a label or an artist by that number ascending puts the least-circulated pressings at the top. This is the single most effective filter available to anyone digging online, and almost nobody uses it.

HAVE < 60 and WANT > HAVE — the shape of a record that is quietly getting discovered right now.

Follow the credits sideways

The engineer on a record you love mixed forty others. The studio has a page. The mastering house has a page. Credits are a graph, and the interesting paths through it are the ones that leave the genre you started in.

The best records you will find this year are two clicks away from a record you already own.

Keep a losing wantlist

Add things you are not sure about. A wantlist full of certainties is just a shopping list. A wantlist full of maybes is a research document, and the price alerts turn it into a slow, passive dig that runs while you sleep.