You heard something incredible in a DJ mix. You Shazamed it, got nothing. You scrolled the comments, found a dozen “anyone know track 3?” with no answers. Sound familiar? This guide explains why finding tracks in a DJ mix is hard — and how to do it reliably.
Why DJs Often Don't Share Tracklists
There are a few reasons. Some tracks are unreleased white labels or promos — sharing them publicly attracts cease-and-desist letters. Some DJs keep their selections private to stay ahead of competitors. And honestly, typing out 30+ tracks with timestamps after a four-hour set is tedious. The result is that the majority of DJ mixes on SoundCloud and YouTube are published without any tracklist at all.
Why Shazam Doesn't Work on Mixes
Shazam is designed for single tracks played cleanly. A DJ mix is a continuous stream of overlapping audio. Shazam can only listen to a few seconds at a time, it doesn't know when one track ends and another begins, and it gives up entirely during transitions. Even if you catch a track cleanly, you're manually timing each sample and working through an hour-long mix one segment at a time. Practically speaking, it's not viable for anything longer than a few tracks.
What Actually Works: Audio Fingerprinting Across the Whole Mix
The approach that works is slicing the entire mix into short overlapping segments and running each one through a music recognition database simultaneously. This is how Scanamix works. You paste in a URL or upload a file, and the system handles the rest:
- The audio is downloaded and split into 10-second segments
- Every segment is fingerprinted in parallel against a catalogue of over 100 million tracks
- Results are consolidated, duplicates removed, and timestamps calculated
- You get a complete tracklist — usually within a few minutes
Because the whole mix is processed at once, transitions and overlapping audio are handled automatically. There's no manual timing. You don't need to be in the right place when a track starts.
What You Can Identify
The system works well for most commercially released music: house, techno, trance, drum & bass, hip-hop, pop. It can identify both the original versions and many well-known remixes. Each track comes back with:
- Artist name and track title
- Timestamp (when it starts in the mix)
- Confidence score (how certain the match is)
The things it won't catch are genuine white labels with no commercial release, custom edits the DJ made themselves, and occasionally very obscure releases that aren't in any database. In practice, a typical DJ mix returns 70–90% of tracks identified.
Exporting Your Tracklist
Once the scan is complete, you can export the tracklist in several formats:
- YouTube description format — timestamps formatted as clickable chapter markers, ready to paste into the video description
- SoundCloud format — tracklist text optimised for SoundCloud's character limit
- Mixcloud format — same, for Mixcloud track listings
- Plain text — one line per track, for pasting anywhere
You can also filter the tracklist by confidence level — showing only high-confidence matches if you want to avoid any uncertain identifications.
Getting Started
Every account includes one free mix scan with no time limit and no card required. Create a free account and paste any SoundCloud, YouTube, or Mixcloud URL. Most mixes return results within two to five minutes.
If you regularly want tracklists — for your own sets or to keep up with your favourite DJs — the Hobbyist plan at $6.99/month includes 300 minutes of scanning per month, which covers roughly 10 to 15 full-length sets.