Every great DJ set starts long before the club, the festival, or the livestream.
It starts with digging, the slow and deliberate process of finding tracks that most people will never hear until you play them for them. And these days, that digging rarely happens in a crate at a record shop. It happens on SoundCloud, in a six hour Boiler Room set, or buried three layers deep in the reposts of a producer you’ve never met.
This is the first stage of what’s known as the Explore-Build-Perform funnel, a framework I’ve written about before in detail here. Before you can build a library and actually perform with it, you have to explore, and exploring well is a skill that gets sharper the more intentional you are about it. Below is a practical breakdown of where to look, why each source matters, and how to filter out the noise once you find it.
SoundCloud: The Underground Discovery Engine
SoundCloud was founded in Germany back in 2007, and nearly two decades on, it remains the closest thing dance music has to a living, breathing underground [1]. Where Spotify and Apple Music are built around finished, commercially cleared releases, SoundCloud runs on user generated uploads and direct contact between artists and listeners, which is exactly what makes it such a reliable place to discover music that hasn’t reached the wider market yet.
A few reasons SoundCloud still earns a place in your rotation:
- Underground and exclusive access. Producers routinely upload demos, white label edits, and unreleased bootlegs that will never show up on Beatport or Traxsource, at least not for a while.
- Free download mechanics. Rising artists often trade a high quality WAV or MP3 download for a like, a comment, or a repost, which is a cheap and easy way to grow a library early on.
- Network effects. The Repost function works like a public endorsement, pushing a track out into a producer’s own network, while features like “Fans also like” quietly map out the wider underground scene on your behalf.
How to Use SoundCloud Properly
- Build a dedicated DJ profile. This signals your identity to SoundCloud’s algorithm and trains it to serve you relevant tracks rather than generic playlist filler.
- Curate who you follow, carefully. Only follow artists, boutique labels, and selectors whose sound genuinely matches your direction, because your feed should function as a filter rather than a firehose.
- Audit the reposts of DJs you admire. Artists use reposts to champion collaborators and peers they respect, which is how a lot of hidden gems surface that would never appear in a plain search.
- Capture everything to a Want List. Don’t trust your memory here. Every track that resonates gets logged the moment you hear it, because this Want List is the actual bridge between exploring music and building a library out of it.
SoundCloud isn’t the only place this kind of underground digging happens either. Reddit communities like r/TheOverload have quietly become another home for drum and bass and bass music heads trading unreleased dubs and forum only rips, and they’re worth a browse if that’s your lane.
The DJ Mix Ecosystem: Why Context Beats Previews
Here’s something a lot of newer DJs tend to underrate: listening to a full DJ mix tells you things a thirty second store preview simply can’t. A preview is a track heard in isolation. A mix shows you how that same record handles an energy build, how it bridges into a neighbouring key, and how it actually behaves in the middle of a live transition. If you’re still relying purely on a store’s preview player to decide what to buy, it might be worth watching my video on why you should stop using Beatport as your only source of discovery, because context matters more than most people give it credit for.
Think of a mix like a tasting menu. The host DJ has already sourced the ingredients, meaning the records, and arranged them into a cohesive experience. Your job as the listener is to sample the whole thing, take note of what stands out, and go acquire those specific records for yourself. This isn’t a new idea either. Long before streaming, plenty of us built our early libraries off the back of classic mix CDs picked up at record shops or festival merch tables, working backwards from a compilation to track down the individual records buried inside it.
The catch, of course, is track ID. Sets can run for hours, and tracklists are frequently withheld on purpose, since DJ culture has always guarded its exclusive IDs closely. When you hit that wall, a few tools genuinely help:
- Crowdsourced setlist wikis like 1001Tracklists and MixesDB, where archivists log timestamps and cue points for recorded sets going back years.
- Audio fingerprinting apps like Shazam or SoundHound, reliable enough for commercially released tracks, though far less useful for unreleased promos or vinyl only edits.
- Community archiving. Leaving a timestamped comment on a SoundCloud mix upload will often get you a crowdsourced ID from another listener within hours.
Why Label Mix Series & Internet Radio Deserve Your Attention
Endless scrolling is exhausting, and it’s not really a discovery strategy so much as a way to burn an evening. A smarter approach is to anchor your listening around institutions that have already done the curation work for you, namely label mix series and internet radio.
Label Mix Series as Catalogue Showcases
Independent labels don’t earn much from streaming royalties, so plenty of them lean on regular mix series instead, using them to spotlight upcoming promos alongside back catalogue classics. Glitterbox Recordings, the Defected Records imprint launched in 2014, has used its Glitterbox Radio show, now well past 400 episodes with selectors like Louie Vega and Purple Disco Machine behind the decks, to cement a distinct house and disco identity in the market. I wrote a full case study on how they pulled this off, which you can read here. Following even a handful of label series in your genre gives you a steady, pre-filtered stream of music that already fits your lane.
Internet Radio: The Original Escape From AM/FM
Internet radio has been freeing DJs from mainstream programming since the mid-1990s, with pioneers like Digitally Imported paving the way long before streaming was mainstream [2]. Today’s stations still function as cultural incubators, and a few are worth knowing:
| Broadcaster | Origin | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| BBC Radio 1 | UK | Home of Pete Tong’s long running Essential Mix |
| NTS Radio | London | Eclectic, artist led, genuinely avant garde |
| Rinse FM | London | UK bass, grime, dubstep, grew out of pirate radio |
| The Lot Radio | Brooklyn | Live broadcasts from a shipping container kiosk |
| Red Light Radio | Amsterdam | Cult European electronic and industrial |
| HÖR Berlin | Berlin | Techno and electro, filmed from a tiled bathroom studio |
| dublab | Los Angeles | Non-profit, ambient and experimental leaning |
The video platforms are worth just as much attention. Cercle films cinematic sets at landmark locations around the world, Boiler Room built its name on raw, crowd facing club energy, and Resident Advisor’s RA Sessions go deeper into documentary style features on artists and scenes. Watching a set rather than just hearing it adds a layer of context, crowd reaction, technique under pressure, track selection on the fly, that audio alone can’t fully capture.
Finding and Following Your Own Tastemakers
At the top of the curation pyramid sit the tastemakers, veteran selectors and label heads whose reputations were built over decades of crate digging and technical skill. When someone like Ben UFO, Laurent Garnier, or Dixon drops an obscure record into a set, that endorsement carries real weight across the entire underground scene.
Following the right tastemakers does a few things for you at once. It pre-vets quality, since they’ve already filtered through thousands of promo submissions to arrive at their best selections. It adds historical depth, because veteran selectors tend to connect new releases back to the disco, funk, and rare groove records that shaped them in the first place. And it forecasts sonic movement, since these are usually the people who spot a sub-genre shift years before it reaches a chart or an algorithm.
A simple five step protocol for building your own tastemaker list:
- Track the source. When you love an unidentified track in a mix, find out who originally played it and dig through their broader catalogue of sets.
- Test for longevity. Prioritise selectors who have stayed relevant for ten years or more over anyone trending this particular month.
- Seek depth over clout. Follow crate digging skill and programming instinct, not follower count.
- Find the DJ’s DJs. Read interviews with producers you already rate and note who they credit as an influence.
- Follow active label heads. Running a respected independent label requires sharp curation instincts, which makes their radio shows and guest mixes prime digging territory.
It’s also worth acknowledging that not everyone trusts algorithms to do this filtering job well, and for good reason. I recently sat down with Marc Aterman, also known as Comfort Zone, a Toronto based drum and bass producer and co-founder of Lazy Records, an algorithm-free music discovery app built specifically to bring serendipity back into how people find new music. Marc’s own journey ran from downloading tracks on Kazaa and LimeWire as a teenager through to producing and collaborating with respected labels, and his concerns about algorithm-driven discovery are exactly why Lazy Records exists in the first place.
You can watch the full conversation on YouTube or read the write up on Beyond the Decks. It’s a good reminder that human curation, whether that’s a tastemaker, a label head, or a founder building a platform around it, still beats a black box recommendation engine more often than not.
Bringing It Back to the Library
All of this, SoundCloud, mix digging, label series, internet radio, and tastemakers, feeds directly into Stage 1 of the Explore-Build-Perform funnel. Everything you find gets logged to a Want List, and that Want List is what eventually turns into Stage 2, building an actual library, and Stage 3, performing with it. If you want a full breakdown of how discovery fits into the bigger picture, along with a free copy of “20 Major Labels To Keep Your Eyes On,” check out my Modern DJ Handbook course, which goes deep into music discovery and a lot more besides.
For anyone who wants an even more structured walkthrough of this exact process, Robert Simoes covers the discovery stage of the EBP funnel in far more depth in his book, Building a Great DJ Music Library: A Structured Approach to Building a Winning Electronic Music DJ Collection, available on Kindle and in paperback via Amazon, and on Kobo for ereader users [3].
FAQ
Is SoundCloud still relevant for DJs, or has it been replaced by Spotify and Apple Music? It’s more relevant than ever, largely because it hasn’t been replaced. Spotify and Apple Music are built for finished, commercially cleared releases, while SoundCloud is still where producers upload demos, white labels, and unreleased edits directly, which keeps it as the main engine for underground music discovery rather than mainstream listening.
What’s the fastest way to identify an unfamiliar track in a DJ mix? Start with crowdsourced tracklist sites like 1001Tracklists or MixesDB, then try an audio fingerprinting app like Shazam for anything commercially released. For vinyl only or unreleased edits, your best bet is usually to leave a timestamped comment on the original mix upload and let the community answer for you.
Do I need to follow dozens of tastemakers to build a decent library? Not really. A handful of well chosen tastemakers who’ve stayed relevant for a decade or more will outperform a huge, unfiltered following list almost every time. Depth beats volume here.
How does listening to full DJ mixes help with library building compared to browsing a store? A store preview shows you a track in isolation, while a mix shows you that same track in context, how it builds energy, how it transitions, how it actually works on a dancefloor, all of which tells you far more about whether it belongs in your own collection.
Where does all of this fit into a bigger DJ workflow? It’s Stage 1 of the Explore-Build-Perform funnel. Everything you find on SoundCloud, in mixes, on radio, and through tastemakers gets logged to a Want List, which then feeds Stage 2, building your library, and eventually Stage 3, performing with it.
Final Word
Digging well isn’t really about consuming more content.
It’s about building better filters, one source at a time. SoundCloud gives you the raw, unfiltered underground. Label mix series and internet radio give you pre-curated streams worth trusting. Tastemakers, and increasingly platforms built by people like Marc Aterman who care about serendipity over algorithms, give you a human filter shaped by real taste.
Stack all three together and you’ll spend a lot less time scrolling and a lot more time actually playing music worth playing.
Notes
[1] Simoes, R. (2025). Building a Great DJ Music Library: A Structured Approach to Building a Winning Electronic Music DJ Collection. Aqua Flamingo Labs.
[2] Ibid., on the history and role of internet radio broadcasters in DJ culture.
[3] Ibid., on the Explore-Build-Perform funnel and the role of the Want List in library building.
