DigDeeper:ThreeWaystoFollowaSound

Same artist: full discography mode

SAME ARTIST pulls a random track from the current artist's full Discogs discography. If you found a great Freddie Roach record, this mode digs through all Freddie Roach releases and surfaces one at random. It is how you go from a single find to knowing an artist's catalog. Hit it multiple times to work through the output of anyone who interests you.

By producer: follow the credits

BY PRODUCER reads the extraartists credits from the Discogs release page, finds anyone listed as producer or arranger, and uses them as the filter for the next dig. This is how you trace a production lineage without knowing it in advance. Find a great 1970s soul record, hit BY PRODUCER, and you might end up in a completely different genre produced by the same person. That is the useful kind of discovery.

Similar sounds: the Last.fm network

SIMILAR SOUNDS uses the Last.fm artist similarity network to find artists with a high match score, picks one from the top results, and digs a track in that direction. Last.fm similarity is based on actual listening patterns rather than editorial tags, which means it finds genuine connections that genre labels sometimes miss. A hard bop session might surface a Brazilian jazz pianist. A 1970s funk record might link to an African highlife artist.

When to use each mode

• —SAME ARTIST: when you have found someone whose output you want to know better
• —BY PRODUCER: when the production itself is what interests you, not just the artist
• —SIMILAR SOUNDS: when you want to move sideways into related territory you did not know about