Dead Format vs HiddenTrack
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- 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
Read full descriptionHide 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.
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.
- 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
Read full descriptionHide 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
Verdict
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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
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.
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.
| Parameter | Dead Format | HiddenTrack |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (132 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 132 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 6 days — better | Every 5 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 15.1 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 93 MB | 34 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Dead Format LLC | JASON EDWARD ROBERTS |
Customer experience
Dead Format
HiddenTrack
In-app purchases
Dead Format
No in-app purchases
HiddenTrack
No in-app purchases








