Discogs expands its marketplace to help you sell used audio gear
Discogs’ vinyl-tracking app and database are handy for vinyl collectors on the hunt for some new goods. However, the company is moving beyond records and into audio gear as a whole with its next big project. In an interview with Thump, Discogs founder and CEO Kevin Lewandowski explained that it already launched a database called Gearogs for synths, drum machines, turntables and more.
“We’ve started Gearogs, because gear is so close to records,” Lewandowski explained to Thump. “We’re launching a marketplace in April.”
While Gearogs is just the directory for now, next month users will be able to buy and sell things like turntables, synthesizers, guitar pedals, speakers, headphones, mixers and more — the item you can look up in the database. “Any equipment that records, amplifies, mixes, or reproduces audio, belongs here,” the site’s homepage says.
Why expand into second-hand audio gear? Discogs COO Chad Dahlstrom said it’s something the site’s users wanted. Dahlstrom explained that Discogs’ method of cataloging vinyl worked well so collectors wanted to apply the same practice to other items. Of course, audio gear was a logical progression.
Discogs just released a big update to its vinyl app in December and the company is working on ways to make the data on your music collection a lot more useful as well. Right now, information on releases and track lists are plain text and aren’t super useful beyond a quick reference. However, Discogs wants to eventually link tracks so users can dive deep into specifics. Eventually you’ll be able to find things details like songwriters, alternate versions, any remastering and more based on the metadata in the music directory. Lewandowski admits there’s still a lot of work to do, but the results should be worth it.
“We haven’t figured it out fully yet, but there will be over a hundred million tracks in our database, so pulling all that information out and then tying it all together is a really big deal,” he said.
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