Just got a message from the founder of a new company and service called iCrates and I have to say it’s a pretty interesting tool, which does raise certain ethical questions for the seasoned record digger. As you can see from the demo video, iCrates in a Iphone application that uses new communication tools to support and help the process of digging for physical music releases.
So you are basically digging around in a dusty basement and you find an old jazz record on an obscure label, well you type in some info in your phone or even scan the barcode and you can have info like preview clips, artist info, ratings and even how much it’s worth on the market.
Now granted a lot of die hards will agree that this will make people without that deep knowledge of the history of music be suddenly on the level of the best diggers in the world. I’ll argue that this information already exists. You’re digging for a record and you just look it up on your phone through Discogs or AllMusic. This just makes things a whole lot faster.
There are some things that I like about this and some things I’m not too sure about, but regardless of how I feel about it, you can’t back-track technology. Once an app like this exists it’s a game changer for sure. No more digging with the portable vestax turntable I guess…
One thing that I really don’t like about this is that I think used record stores will start using this to price records and suddenly the record stores that specializes in rock won’t let go that obscure disco record for 1$ because he doesn’t have a clue what it is. He will scan the record and because some japanese collector is willing to buy this for 150$, he’ll just assume that its the overall price of the market.
Anyways, I like it… but I guess as a digger it’s the kind of tool you wish you had to yourself…
How to digg music with the iCrates App from iCrates on Vimeo.
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