Sampling

The Top 26 Places For "Online Crate Digging"

While we always head to the record store to go crate digging, you can always find some gems digging online. Here are 26 great “spots” courtesy of Hip Hop Rally (RIP).

There’s nothing better than walking into a record store and feeling the plastic record sleeves beneath your fingertips. But sometimes that requires travelling miles and if you’re on a budget, that might not be financially viable.

Fortunately, a concept known as e-digging exists which is effectively online crate digging. This idea may be frowned upon by some producers due to the quality of the samples but it serves as a means to an end and as long as you make sure samples you find online are AT LEAST 256 kbit/s, it should sound fine. Opinions on that differ, as you’ll notice when reading the article below, but we’ll stick to our guns on that as purveyors of the Sampleface Way of Life.

The main places to look are YouTube channels and *vinyl blogs, the latter of which provide albums, usually of the best possible quality and some rarities for sure.

YouTube Channels:

  1. Vinyle Archéologie: a living aural museum featuring lost, rare, vintage, obscure, hidden, forgotten and unknown music
  2. The Land Of Crate Digging
  3. Subrhythmic: Skylar’s Life & Crates: as he says himself,”a crate digger in the classic sense – my natural obsession with music was further fostered through sample culture and classic hip-hop (1986-1997)”
  4. Ciabbill: foreign records. I’ve founds some cool sounds here
  5. Batch Music Library: Crate digging for groove, sounds & obscure. An”open repository of samples, breaks and unusual rhythm”
  6. TheRetroElevator: a great collection of bossanova and easy listening music
  7. Smell The Crates: high-quality records in here, buncha good ’70’s stuff
  8. Obscure Sampology: Vinyl excavation. Obscure samples. Rare Rhythms and drum breaks from around the world
  9. Vinyl Records: Dedicated to uploading retro vinyl records of all sorts.
  10. Soul Strut Vinyl Archive: a treasure trove of soul, funk, jazz, and pop.
  11. Pharomba: if you like trippy sounds to sample from, this is your spot.
  12. dyvelsten: HEAVY / PROGRESSIVE / PSYCHEDELIC / ACID / FOLK / ROCK.
  13. Ricardo Maraña: European stuff – exotica, pop, easy listening, rock, electronic.
  14. Soul On Your Side: if you like soul records. This is that deal.
  15. Psychedelic Guy: psychedelic rock: synths, guitars, drums, organs. Trippy
  16. Rocking All Life Long: rockabilly, rock’n’roll, hillbilly, country, roots blues, R&B.

Vinyl Blogs:

  1. Vinyl Frontier: I’ve been exposed to some awesome music here.
  2. Yahuhol Vinyl Rip: a wide range of music from all genres with a focus on Japanese imports
  3. Blaq’s Lossless Worldwide: lossless 12″ records of all genres.
  4. Soul Funk 80’s: soul, Funk, Jazz, R&B from the 70’s and 80’s
  5. Into the Rhythm: lot’s of Jazz records. But really a bunch of everything.
  6. Lossless World: jazz, blues, you name it. They got it.
  7. Never Enough Rhodes: dedicated to the Rhodes Piano: chords, keys, etc.
  8. Derek’s Daily 45: the entire blog is dedicated to cool singles.
  9. Vinyl Genius: a bunch of gems.
  10. Funk My Soul: another great resource.

(Also check our 21 ways to take your e-digging to the next level.)

*Please note, vinyl blogs usually provide links to illegally download albums which we do not condone.

Hi, it's Luke, the editor of Sampleface! Why not subscribe to my Patreon and support the blog?

4 thoughts on “The Top 26 Places For “Online Crate Digging””

    1. We’re not talking about specifically buying records online, were talking about downloadable vinyl rips that are distributed via blogs. It is also not a term we have come up with ourselves.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.