Why 1001Tracklists has played a fundamental role in the industry
1001Tracklists has always been at the centre of the electronic music industry as a source of information. Through its statistics, it provides a great deal of insight into the success of individual artists, tracks and events. Edited and updated by fans, it stands alone as the single most viable tracklist source for DJ sets on the Internet. But why is 1001Tracklists such an important aspect of the industry?
The site is based on sharing set lists from live performances as well as podcasts and offers users the chance to track down unknown IDs. For this reason, it is an incredibly well-visited site in the electronic music fan community, as tracking down IDs is something that fans do on a regular basis. As well as checking an individual set, the site enables users to search for a particular track and see exactly when and where it has been dropped. The site also offers leaderboards illustrating the most viewed tracklists over a certain period of time. You can also see top newcomer tracks, trending tracks, Spotify top 50, top overall tracks, top mashups, most-watched IDs and more.
Unlike other ranking systems, 1001Tracklists is the only resource for tracking how often a song is played live. For this reason, it is a great measure of trends and is a great predictor of the shape of live sets. For artists, there are many benefits that can be gained by using 1001Tracklists. It is incredibly important to have a presence on the site in order to be recognised as a fully legitimate artist.
Anyone can upload their own tracklist to 1001Tracklists after receiving user credits for identifying songs in other tracklists. The reason why this is so important for producers is that 1001Tracklists is a great advertising tool. It is regularly visited by dedicated electronic music fans, exactly the kind of people who you need to connect with to further your brand. By creating a tracklist for your own podcast or live performance, you prove yourself with great advertising and the opportunity to connect with potential fans.
At the end of each year, 1001Tracklists provides details on the artists who have proven the most popular. This is a great measure of which artists are dominating the industry, and who you should learn from. If you’re established enough to appear in this ranking yourself, it’s a great boost for your career and reputation. It gives you an added level of legitimacy for your branding. You may think that you need to be one of the most famous artists in the world to appear, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The 1001Tracklists ranking rarely shares a strong resemblance with the DJ Mag top 100 ranking.
Another helpful aspect of 1001Tracklists is that it provides a great deal of data. For DJs looking for new music to play in live sets, 1001Tracklists is a great place to find out which tracks are circling DJ sets at the current moment. For example, ‘Zombie’ was one of the most played tracks last summer alongside ‘Losing It’. By finding out which tracks are being played the most often, you can figure out which tracks are proving most popular with worldwide audiences. Even if you choose not to include the most popular tracks, the data can provide you with inspiration, and can help you discover new artists who’s music you’d like to play.
If you manage to successfully pitch your track to an artist with a podcast and they decide to feature it, many of the people who hear it may refer to 1001Tracklists to find out that it’s yours. For this reason, 1001Tracklists plays an integral role in the music-discovery process for fans. Other than Shazam, there is no sure-fire way out there to find an unidentified track aside from 1001Tracklists. If your track does get featured in a live set or podcast, make sure to head over to 1001Tracklists to ensure that your track has made it onto the tracklist. If it’s not there, add it. If it’s incorrect, edit it.
This year, 1001Tracklists introduced their ‘A State of Dance Music’ concept, which includes data on the whole of 2018. This includes top tracks, top genres and top tracklists. The document also includes details about how many people used 1001Tracklists over the course of 2018, and the statistics are certainly impressive. According to the document, over 36,000 tracklists were uploaded during 2018, which is 20% more than the previous year, indicating exponential growth. The statistics show that almost 100 sets were uploaded per day, a huge number when you consider how many performances are taking place around the world at any one time.
The extremely fast growth of the platform alone is enough to prove how much of an influential role it plays within the music industry as a whole. Although primarily focused on dance music, 1001Tracklists has far-reaching influence across the music industry. In fact, most major artists cite is as a source for details on their latest sets. Many even link the site in the description of their live videos for fans to access the tracklist. The influence of the platform only adds to the value of sharing your content through it. Make sure your tracklists are up to date, and make sure when an artist drops your track that it is listed. Even if you choose to use a fake name, make sure to set up a user on the site so that you can edit your own content.