Tracklist

A tracklist is the ordered list of tracks played in a DJ set, mix compilation, or radio show — typically numbered, often with the timestamp at which each track entered the mix, and sometimes annotated with transition notes such as "w/" (played alongside), "into" (mixed into the next track), or "mashup" (combined with another record). The tracklist is the textual document of a set, separate from any audio recording of it: it captures the selection and order, but not the actual blend. For listeners, a tracklist is what turns an enjoyed but anonymous radio show or festival video into a list of records they can hunt down individually; for DJs, releasing or withholding a tracklist is itself a decision that shapes how the set is consumed afterwards. The central global infrastructure for tracklists is 1001Tracklists, launched in 2011 by Berlin-based German software developer Jahn Baers (later joined by Evan Sacks and Jacob Merlin on the business side). The platform is crowdsourced — any registered user can submit a tracklist for a set, propose an ID for an unknown track, and upvote correct identifications — and now hosts well over 260,000 tracklists covering radio shows, festival mainstages, club residencies, podcasts, and livestreams across the global dance-music scene. Each tracklist page embeds the associated YouTube or SoundCloud audio so the timestamps are clickable, and aggregates per-track statistics across the database that feed the annual Top 101 Producers ranking the company has hosted during Amsterdam Dance Event since 2018. Format conventions are remarkably consistent across the scene. Each line typically carries a position number, a timestamp (HH:MM:SS or MM:SS relative to set start), the artist (or co-artist chain), the track title, and a label in brackets. Unidentified tracks appear as <em>ID — ID</em> until the community or the DJ reveals them. Edit, remix, and mashup status is flagged in the title field. Subsequent revisions of the same set on different stages will appear as separate tracklists, which lets a researcher compare how a given selection evolves between, say, an ASOT broadcast and a later festival performance of the same material. Official tracklists exist as well, and the publication policy varies by show. A State of Trance, Group Therapy Radio, Future Sound of Egypt, and Anjunadeep's various podcasts all publish official cuesheets on their show pages, partly because the residencies are licensed broadcasts and partly because the audience expects them — readers can cross-check these against the related <a href="/glossary/asot">A State of Trance</a> entry and the broader <a href="/glossary/set">set</a> and <a href="/glossary/track-id">track-ID</a> infrastructure. Festival mainstage sets, by contrast, are almost always left to the community to transcribe, with the DJ sometimes confirming IDs after the fact on social media. The result is a hybrid ecosystem: a backbone of authoritative show-tracklists from established radio properties, plus a much larger crowdsourced layer that covers everything else.