Crate digging is finding music yourself instead of waiting for a recommendation: flipping through the bins at a record shop, or following a lead through the liner notes, until you turn up something good you have never heard. In Japan the same idea has its own verb, ディグる (diguru), made from the English "dig".

The short version

  • What it means: going through records one by one, and following one lead after another, to dig out good music.
  • Where it comes from: record shops sell LPs standing up in crates. The practice is tied to 1980s hip-hop producers, who searched old records for sounds to sample.
  • In Japanese: ディグる turned "dig" into a Japanese verb, starting with DJs. Someone who digs a lot is a ディガー, a digger.
  • How it differs from a recommendation: a recommendation comes to you; digging is you going to the music. You choose the lead, so the path you took stays with you.

A word that came out of record crates

A crate is the box records stand in at a shop or a market stall. Crate digging is going through it, one sleeve at a time.

The practice is most closely tied to hip-hop. In the 1980s, producers combed second-hand shops and car boot sales for old records with drums and phrases they could sample, and being a good digger carried real prestige. D.I.T.C., the hip-hop collective formed in New York in 1992, is short for Diggin' in the Crates Crew.

In Japan, ディグる is said to have started among DJs, who play no instrument and are judged by what they choose to play. The word has since spread beyond records to vintage clothes and video games: anywhere people go looking for something good themselves.

Five leads to follow

Digging isn't luck. Every dig follows a lead.

  1. Follow the credits. The back cover and liner notes name the players, producer, arranger and engineer. If you love a record, find out what else its drummer or arranger played on. On Discogs you can click from one credit to the next record. Our piece A Brief History of CITY POP: Following the Names on the Back of the Record is one long walk through those names.
  2. Follow the label. Records from the same label and the same years were often made by the same musicians in the same studios. Getting to know one label hands you a list.
  3. Follow a genre's roots. Ask where the music came from. City pop, for example, draws on funk, disco, soft rock, jazz fusion and bossa nova, and each of those roots leads to a new shelf of records. Our music genre map shows how 1,203 genres branch out and influence each other.
  4. Follow the samples. A hook you love in a hip-hop track often comes from a record made decades earlier. Find the original, then listen to the whole album it came from. That is crate digging in its original form. Sites like WhoSampled list where samples come from.
  5. Dig in the shop. The listening station, a staff member's handwritten pick, a cover that catches your eye: all of them are leads. Before a record fair or flea market, read Record Fairs and Flea Market Digging in Practice.

Write down what you dig up

The thing most easily lost in digging is the path: which lead a record came from, and where you wanted to go next.

You can keep what you find in CRATTO. Scan a record's barcode or catalog number to find the pressing on Discogs; your records are filed into crates by genre automatically; and you can preview them on Apple Music. See How to Manage Your Vinyl Records with CRATTO.

CRATTO's Taste Map turns the third lead above into part of the app: 1,203 genres sit on a rotating globe, and the ones in your collection light up, so the path you have taken shows at a glance. Open a genre and dotted lines lead to where it came from and to the genres it shaped; its card lists must-hear albums and subgenres. Add an album straight to your collection or wantlist, then follow the roots to the next genre.

FAQ

Is crate digging only about vinyl? It started with records, but the habit works anywhere: CD racks, Bandcamp label pages, the credits in a streaming app. What makes it digging is that you choose the next listen by following a lead, not by playing the order a system laid out for you.

What is a crate digger? Someone who digs for records, especially overlooked ones. In Japan the same person is called a ディガー.

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