Timehri Dig Assistant is an accurate dance-centric Discogs recommendation tool
A UK developer, DJ and record label owner has built a tool that supposedly provides more accurate recommendations for dance music on Discogs.
Getty / Luka Radojevi
A UK developer, DJ and record label owner has built a tool that supposedly provides more accurate recommendations for dance music on Discogs.
The work-in-progress Timehri Dig Assistant, built by Timehri Records head honcho Toby Dunn, is, according to Dunn, literally a digging assistant that recommends similar records as you dig through collections on Discogs. It works exclusively on dance music genres such as house, deep house, tech house, prog house, UKG, grime, UK funky, techno, jungle/d‘n’b, electro, acid, breaks, breakbeat, minimal and more.
Dig Assistant works by simply entering the Discogs URL into the site. It will then return up to six recommendations. You can then click ‘dive’ next to each track to go further into the tracks similar to that suggestion.
The tool was created using coding frameworks Rust and Python and is based on a sophisticated machine-learning data pipeline developed by data engineers at Timehri Records over the course of 2022/2023.
In a recent post to Instagram, Dunn shares the reasoning behind the tool:
“As many of you know, I’m an avid digger and record collector, last I checked I had a few thousand vinyl in my living room. However, I always found the recommendations Discogs threw up to be a little watered down and often missing the mark.
“I’ve been writing code since I was around 14 and my ‘day job’ revolves around Data / Software Engineering, with a special focus on big data and distributed data processing applications.
“The problem of recommendations is well suited to this, so I took it upon myself to improve the digging experience for me and the vinyl digging community, via the Timehri wormhole.
“The result is Dig Assistant. Think of it as a helper to browse vinyl releases on Discogs.”
Dunn isn’t the only dance music figure to create a tool that helps guide music buyers towards new releases. Avalon Emerson recently told MusicTech about Buy Music Club, her own platform that lets dance music artists post lists of music with links to Bandcamp. She also said that these tools are important as digging for music all by yourself is now a “dying pastime”.
Try out the beta of Timehri Dig Assistant at digassistant.xyz.
