Comparison

Dead Format vs HiddenTrack

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Dead Format

Connect with a community of vinyl enthusiasts to share your collection, discover new music, and engage in discussions. Organize your records, find local record stores, and buy or sell vinyl with other collectors.

Highlights
  • Share listening activity and collection updates
  • Organize personal vinyl collection
  • Participate in monthly Vinyl Challenges
  • Engage in community forums
  • Buy and sell vinyl records
  • Discover local record stores
Features
Read full description

Dead Format is a community for vinyl collectors to share what they're listening to, talk about records, connect with fellow collectors, and more! Post what you're spinning, show off your latest pickups or listening setup, take part in monthly Vinyl Challenges, join conversations in the forums, organize your collection, find record stores, and buy and sell vinyl. One of the main features of Dead Format is the Home feed, and it works more like old-school social media. There's no weird algorithm deciding what you should see. The Following feed shows you every post from everyone you follow, in order, so you can actually keep up with what they're sharing. You can also browse the Discover tab whenever you want to see more popular posts and highlights from what's being shared by the rest of the community. Every month, there's a new Vinyl Challenge with a different prompt each day. Join in whenever you want, share a record that fits the day's prompt, browse everyone else's choices, and discover some new records and collectors along the way. The forums are a place for longer conversations, questions, recommendations, polls, and anything else that doesn't really fit into a regular post. Keep track of your collection and Want List, filter your records by artist, format, and more, upload your own photos, and track how often you're playing each record. You can even scrobble your spins to Last.fm. You can also find record stores near you or browse stores in other cities, save your favorites, tag them when you post about a recent visit or pickup, and help contribute any stores that might be missing. There's a Marketplace too, built around listings with real photos of the records being sold. Buyers can make offers, see shipping costs before checkout, and pay directly through the app. Sellers can list individual records or bundles, manage offers, and purchase discounted USPS shipping labels.

About

HiddenTrack

Discover curated music collections and share your favorite tracks. Browse hand-picked vinyl, save records to your personal collection, and build your own themed crates to share with the community. Experience music discovery without algorithms or ads.

Highlights
  • Swipe to discover music
  • 30-second track previews
  • Direct buy links to artists
  • Save records to personal collection
  • Build and share custom crates
  • Community feed for crate discovery
Features
Read full description

HiddenTrack is a small, slow app for the people who still care what's on the B-side. Curated crates of handpicked vinyl — themed, rotating, made with intention. Swipe through cards like you're flipping through a bin. Preview tracks instantly. Save the ones that speak to you. Share the ones you can't keep to yourself. THE EXPERIENCE • Swipe right to keep, left to pass, up to listen • 30-second previews built in — no Spotify or Apple Music needed • Buy links to Bandcamp, Discogs, eBay, and Amazon — support artists directly when you can • Save records to your personal collection • Build your own crates and publish them to the community WHY HIDDENTRACK • No algorithm — every crate is hand-picked by real people • No account needed — your collection is yours • No ads, no noise, no upsells • A mobile-first experience designed for taste, not scale WHO IT'S FOR • Vinyl collectors looking for their next pickup • Crate diggers who miss flipping through bins • Music heads who want to share what they're loving • Anyone tired of "recommended for you" feeds WHAT YOU CAN DO • Browse today's editorial crates — fresh themes, refreshed regularly • Build a personal crate from records you save • Make it public — your friends see a beautiful web page with previews and buy links • Discover crates from other heads in the community feed • Follow the discovery — what's playing, what's new, what's making people stop A hidden track is the song nobody told you about. The reward for staying through the credits. The good stuff for the people who pay attention. This is for them.

Screenshots

Dead Format4 screens
HiddenTrack4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Dead Format at every 6 days against HiddenTrack's every 5 weeks. Dead Format also leads on ratings volume (132 vs 2). On price, rating, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Dead Format against 5.0 for HiddenTrack. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Dead Format has 132 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Dead Format ships an update every 6 days, HiddenTrack every 5 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 8, 2026 and November 5, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
Dead Format versus HiddenTrack: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterDead FormatHiddenTrack
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (132 ratings)5.0 (2 ratings) — better
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings132 — better2
Update frequencyEvery 6 days — betterEvery 5 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS15.0 — better15.1
Further details — not scored
Size93 MB34 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperDead Format LLCJASON EDWARD ROBERTS

Customer experience

Dead Format

All ratings126 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews13 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

HiddenTrack

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

Dead Format

No in-app purchases

None

HiddenTrack

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Dead Format free?
Dead Format is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is HiddenTrack free?
HiddenTrack is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Dead Format or HiddenTrack?
HiddenTrack is rated higher. Dead Format averages 5.0 out of 5 from 132 ratings, while HiddenTrack averages 5.0 from 2 ratings.
Do Dead Format or HiddenTrack have ads?
Neither Dead Format nor HiddenTrack shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Dead Format or HiddenTrack?
Dead Format ships an update every 6 days, and HiddenTrack every 5 weeks. Most recently, Dead Format was updated on November 8, 2026 and HiddenTrack on November 5, 2026.

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