If you’re into vinyl collecting, you definitely shopped at least once on Discogs. And I’m sure you have your collection, or most of it, on discogs. Or just your wishlist. But the problem with discogs is that there isn’t a truly good iOS app for it. And discogs aren’t interested in building one. Of course there are apps like MilkCrate and Discollector, but here’s one with the potential to rule them all: discographic.
FSM EXCLUSIVE DEAL Discographic is pretty much everything you need, from a buyer standpoint, allowing you to search the discogs database, keep track of your record collection and buy records from within app.
You can manage your collection and check your wishlist. However, while you can search your wishlist, you can’t search your collection. That’s a feature that needs to be added as when you pass a few hundred records like most of us are, it would come super handy to see if you already own something when you’re shopping for mo’wax ( pun intended ).
NOTE: however, you can filter your collection by artist/band, title, catalog number or label.
Also, maybe the developer can add an option to take a picture of the records you already own, with their flaws so you can compare if you find another copy. This might not be a smart idea to implement right into the app as it would blow up with a few hundreds or even thousands of photos, but maybe somehow link it to a dropbox account or something similar.
Another thing you can’t do, is add a new release. If it’s not on discogs, you can’t add it from the app.
NOTE: if you have a large collection, it will take forever to load and cache when you first open the app and login. This is due to discogs limiting the fetch to 100 items / second.
Searching for a record couldn’t be easier. You can search by Release, Master, Artist or Label. Obviously you can also search by the catalog number, barcode or matrix. There’s even a barcode scanner built right in.
Once you find the record that you want to buy, just add it to your cart and place the order. You can also pay for your order from right inside the app, but since discogs is super limited in the API they’re offering, the app will open a web view inside the app. If you feel like you need more control over the payment, you can either load the mobile version of discogs in Safari on your iPhone or just use a computer.
The app also offers a profile card where you can check the usual stats like how many items in your wishlist/collection, how many items for sale, rank points etc. And from the settings page you can change your theme, choose to show duplicate releases and how to order items.
All in all this is a super handy app for record collectors, even if it needs small UX changes and some features need to be added. As I said before, the app doesn’t offer any functionality if you’re a seller. However, from my brief conversation with the developer, I was told that this will be added in a future release and it will come complete with notifications when someone places a new order, or comments on an order. Also, there’s an android version coming out by the end of the year.
If you’re looking for a discogs app for your iPhone, check out discographic which is available now for $2.99 on the App Store.
