You stand in front of your shelves. Hundreds of 12-inch slabs of techno, house and trance staring back at you. How do you organise them? Alphabetical order? Genre? Label? Maybe year of release.
Every vinyl collector hits this wall. The brutal reality of physical media is that a piece of wax can only sit in one place at a time. But music does not work like that. Tracks belong together based on the vibe. They bleed into one another across genres and eras.
I looked at the catalogue apps out there and realised they are all built for archivists. They treat your collection like a static library. But vinyl is an active culture. Whether you are a club DJ playing out or a home collector curating a Sunday afternoon session, you are building a journey. I built crAte because I needed a tool that understood curation.
The Virtual Gig Bag
Here is the fix. Let your physical records live on your shelf in whatever strict filing system keeps you sane. Alphabetical is fine. But inside crAte, you tag those records into virtual Bags.
You can build specific setlists. A warmup groove. A peak time warehouse selection. A bag for those deep 3 AM cuts. You pull the tunes together virtually without tearing your physical library apart. And when you drop a record into a bag, the app asks you exactly which track you are planning to play. It displays your chosen cut right beneath the title. No more generic release data cluttering your view. You know exactly what you are pulling that record for.
The White Label Paradox
Getting your collection into an app has to be frictionless. If a record has a crisp barcode, just point your phone camera. Job done.
But if you collect underground electronic music, half your best weapons are stamped promos, test pressings or classic white labels. They do not have barcodes. So I built in a high-speed Catalog Number lookup. You just glance at the dead wax etching or the sleeve stamp. Type in the cat number like SOMA01 or XLT34. The app queries the Discogs and MusicBrainz networks and pulls the artist, title and full tracklist instantly.
Got a total mystery white label? Jump into the manual entry. I also wired in dedicated fields for the price you paid and a Goldmine standard condition picker. It is a brilliant way to keep a quiet tally of what your wax is actually worth and exactly what state it is in.
Built for the Dark
I also thought heavily about where this app gets used. Staring at a bright white screen in a pitch-black club booth or a dimly lit studio is blinding. crAte uses a brutalist, strict black and white high-contrast layout. It cuts the visual noise completely. You get the raw data you need at a glance with zero screen glare to distract you from the mix.
Prep does not stop when you pack the physical bag either. Promoters want tracklists. Radio stations need cue sheets. Fans want IDs. With integrated share sheets, crAte lets you export any virtual gig bag into a clean, professionally formatted CSV file with a single tap. Instantly ping your track selection and BPM notes straight to your email or WhatsApp.
Vinyl is not a passive hobby. Your toolset should reflect that fact. I built crAte to move the focus away from static hoarding and put it exactly where it belongs. Curation. Selection. The flow of the set.
The latest Android preview build is live right now. Drop me a DM on Instagram @a_good_12_inches to get access to the BETA version and help shape the future of crAte.
Grab your wax, spin up the scanner and reclaim your collection.
And … Let me know what you think.