How to find out what a DJ is playing, live, without filming the whole set

You know the move. A track drops, you pull your phone out, open Shazam, hold it up, wait, and by the time it’s named the DJ is two blends further on. Do that all night and you end up with a handful of tracks, no idea when any of them played, and a camera roll full of shaky videos you’ll never watch.

Why it’s hard in a club

Song recognition loves a clean recording. A club gives it the opposite: crowd noise, a lot of bass, effects, and long transitions where two tracks play at once. And if you’re only reaching for your phone when you notice something, you miss everything you didn’t notice.

Let it listen for you

CueID has a mode for exactly this. Open Listen at the start of the set and leave it running. It names each track as it plays and keeps the time it came in, building the tracklist as the night goes on.

• Nothing is recorded. Listen works the way the Shazam app does: it turns a few seconds of sound at a time into a fingerprint and sends only that. No audio is kept.
• Your iPhone stays awake. A set runs for hours, and a locked phone would stop listening, so CueID keeps the screen on while Listen is running. Bring a charged phone, or a battery pack for a long night.
• Keep the microphone uncovered. A phone in a pocket or bag mostly hears fabric.

What won’t match

DJs play a lot of music that isn’t in any catalogue: unreleased tracks, their own edits, bootlegs, white labels. Heavily effected passages and long blends can slip through too. CueID marks what it couldn’t name instead of guessing.

After the set

The tracklist is saved in your library like any other scan, with a time for every track.

• Fill the gaps. Review steps through the uncertain matches and the gaps. If you asked the DJ about a track, or someone posts it later, type it in.
• Keep the tracks. Build an Apple Music playlist from everything it found, in the order it was played.
• Share it. Copy it as plain text for the group chat or a forum thread.

If the set is posted later

Many club nights and festivals post recordings afterwards, often as a podcast. If they do, scan the recording too. CueID can narrow each start time down to the transition, which is more precise than when your phone happened to hear a track across the room. See how to get a tracklist for a DJ mix.

Not just clubs

Listen works anywhere music is playing: a festival stage, a bar, a record shop, or next to the radio.

A listening session counts as one scan, and your first scan is free, so your first night out with Listen costs nothing. CueID is on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and one purchase covers all three.