Last month, I had a chance to sit down with and chat with someone on the forefront of marketing in the dance music industry. Evan Sacks is the CEO of 1001Tracklists, and the COO of Songstats.
In case you didn’t know, both Songstats and 1001Tracklists are pretty integral to the dance music community. Both applications help track and monitor the support that DJ’s receive from other DJ radio shows, as well as live performances.
1001Tracklists focuses on the archival and recording of aforementioned performances, while Songstats is more artist-based, providing up-to-date analytics to your smartphone.
What Value Do These Apps Provide?
First off, let’s dig a little deeper into the inner machinations of both 1001Tracklists and Songstats.
What separates 1001Tracklists from apps like Shazam, Soundhound, and other music recognition tools is that it is entirely community driven. In addition to being community driven, the site has the capability of identifying entire tracklists. This even includes unreleased music(Commonly referred to in the EDM community as “IDs”).
“The value is in the volume of the data we have, and basically being able to use the site for music discovery”
You might be wondering, “Why should I even use 1001Tracklists or Songstats? What will they do for me?” Sacks’ rebuttal is more or less the definition of ideal for most DJs and producers.
“The value is in the volume of the data we have, and basically being able to use the site for music discovery.” Sacks continued, “Whether that’s for finding what your favorite artists are playing in their sets for like inspiration, but also to see what works in a DJ set.”
Even in the earlier years of Sacks’ time with 1001Tracklists, he explained the nuance of marketing for the site.
“They would be super receptive towards us. Like, ‘oh shit, you guys are the guys behind 1001tracklists.’”
“Kind of crazy to me that we would reach out to, you know, pretty big artists and basically to say ‘Hey, we’re starting a new content section on the site. We would love to do an interview with you.’ Basically, they would be super receptive towards us. Like, ‘oh shit, you guys are the guys behind 1001Tracklists.'”
If none of this is enough to truly highlight the value and credibility of 1001Tracklists, there is certainly more to it. Through years of data collection, the site has created a truly unique dataset and product that provide tons of value to both the bedroom DJ, as well as the festival mainstager.

Why 1001Tracklists Will Continue to Be Relevant
Quite simply, when you have the attention of the worlds best, you will usually be at the top of your game. Sacks broke down some of the marketing plays that 1001Tracklists has run in the past few years. The highlight of them included their own ranking of producers with their ‘Top 101 Producers‘.
The Top 101 producers is a statistically driven ranking of the most supported artists over the course of the year. Completely contrarian to other major EDM ranking contests which more or less equate to popularity contests.
“Let’s make our own ranking of artists, but do it totally different. No voting, But something that’s based purely on the data”
Ironically, the idea for the Top 101 Producers seems if anything, to be spurned off of the popularity contest rankings. Sacks would elaborate, “you know what, let’s make our own ranking of artists, but do it totally different. No voting, but something that’s based purely on the data.”
Over the several years of the ranking, producers and DJ’s alike have come to care more about the ranking from 1001Tracklists versus any other ranking. Perhaps what is even more fascinating is that the data tends to predict artist trends, and Sacks also corroborated that concept.
“it’s very leading data. In many cases, artists in the top 101 producers don’t yet have such an established career.” Sacks follows up with his reasoning, “It’s because they haven’t yet solidified their social media presence or their bookings. However they’re getting played by lots of DJs and that’s in many cases kind of the first step that they need in order to then kind of grow their fan base.”
Diving further into the year end review that 1001Tracklists does, includes their entirely data driven “A State Of Dance Music” which is their yearly newsletter detailing all the latest and greatest statistics from the past 12 months.
“At festival sets. I know Armin van Buuren, for example, will check 1001 before he plays to make sure that someone else didn’t play a track that he’s planning on playing.”
“I mean like artists like David Guetta, Tiesto are actively using this.” Sacks pauses, but continues, “Maybe less to discover who’s playing their stuff, but definitely for music discovery and a lot of people are using it for that reason.”
The Integration of Songstats
In addition to the 1001Tracklists, which is already arguably the most useful and accessible data-set for artists, is Songstats. In 2016, Sacks and his fellow 1001Tracklists team members had sought out to create an app to simplify the act of getting your data.
“The key thing there was going to be getting a push notification on your phone when another DJ plays your track.” Sacks decided to break down the competition, “Most of the other platforms are focused on more of providing an enormous amount of data and having you go in and do your digging.”
Naturally, that isn’t exactly the best user experience. Let’s be honest, who wants to dig through troves of data? In addition to the simplification of the experience, Songstats would deliver information in a much faster and efficient way.
Of course, Songstats functions off of the 1001Tracklists database. In addition it features a majority of the other distributors as well. It also has detailed analytics on record labels, showing playlists and playlist reach. This is always helpful when looking for the next label to pitch to.
Conclusion
Overall, I’d argue that not utilizing 1001Tracklists and Songstats as a producer would be counterintuitive as an artist. These assets can make a positive impact on your marketing. In addition, these tools are a great way to track trends in the industry. The value that receiving DJ support provides to artists is often not recognized until a later point in ones production career.
You can learn more from Evan about the impacts of 1001Tracklists and Songstats here.
It certainly is important to find ways to get your music tracklisted. This is just one great way to positively impact your reach as an artist.
If you’d like to hone your tracklisting skills a bit more, we’ve got a special download for you! Fill out the form below and get your FREE 1001Tracklists Checklist and starting positioning yourself to get tracklisted!