New Releases

Since our last update, we’ve published three new releases — two for Desktop and one for iOS — packed with improvements, bug fixes, and new features – requested by our Supporters.

👉 For the full changelog, check out the Release Notes.

We’re now on social media

We just launched our channels! Follow us and help us spread the word about Crates.

Instagram   Bluesky   Facebook   TikTok

Coming up:

• How-to Videos & Tips
• Gems of the Week
• Behind the Scenes

and more!

💸 Streaming vs Buying Music: a Calculator

We built a simple Calculator to show the difference between streaming and buying music — and why Crates is designed to support a healthier music ecosystem, where more of a fan’s budget goes directly to the artists they love.

It’s a quick, visual way for new users (and curious minds) to understand what we’re trying to change — and why it matters.

👉 Try the Calculator

Festival Season is here

Which music festivals are you attending this year?

We’re starting with Athens Music Week this week, where we’ll:
• Speak on the Music Tech Panel
• Record  live podcast episode 

Come join the discussion!

More Festivals hopefully soon – 👀 Sónar, ADE, Reeperbahn
Got any recommendations?

Join us

Got questions, ideas, or just want to chat? Join us over on Crates Discord.

Thanks for sticking with us and for being part of the Crates community. Your support keeps us building.

Apple Silicon Build Now Available!

Got a Mac with M1, M2, M3, or M4? We’ve got you. Crates now has a dedicated Apple Silicon build that runs faster than ever!

👉 To install it, head over to the Downloads page and replace your existing app.

New Features for the DJs Out There

Export to Rekordbox

In our DJ flow, we use Crates for everything needed to prepare our tunes: bookmarking, listening, downloading, populating metadata, and sorting into playlists.

When it’s time to start mixing, we export to Rekordbox (often converting to AIFF first), and all the metadata for our files is retained. Then, magic: all tunes are automatically filed into smart crates.

BPM & Key Detection for Bandcamp Streams

This is super helpful when listening to Bandcamp streams and deciding which tracks match your mix before purchasing.

👉 Simply right-click on the tunes and go to Actions → Calculate BPM & Key (or Ctrl+B).

Glimpse at Version 1.7.4

Here’s a look at what’s improved in the latest update:

• Search: Resolved an issue where searching for tunes or artists with special characters or numbers in their name would not return results.
• Discogs: Better importing and many bug fixes.
• Rekordbox: Addressed an issue where the exported XML file could not be imported in some cases.
• Streaming: Tunes can now be streamed successfully from iOS/iPadOS devices.
• Genres: Custom User Genres and various improvements.
• Settings: The IP address of the Crates Server now appears correctly.
• Playback: Fixed an issue where seeking while playing a tune would cause flashing.
• Safari Extension: Updated to match the latest version.

📜 For a full list of changes, including 1.7.2 and 1.7.3, check out the Release Notes.

• Browse by Artist, Label, Genre or Tag – Dive deeper, rediscover your collection from new perspectives and learn more about your favorite artists and labels.
• Release View – we now present each release with a more minimal layout, highlighting key information and its visual identity

Metadata retrieval and grooming your library

We’ve also paid special attention to improve the ways Crates can retrieve metadata for your music, combining various sources. It can fetch artwork, tags, genres, release/label/artist info and more.

For best results, we recommend connecting to a Discogs account before grooming. This will significantly enrich the pool of metadata sources.

Version 1.7.0 also includes:

• Improved handling of metadata when reading and writing audio files.
• Now supporting Apple and MusicBrainz as new sources for metadata
• Enhanced Server discovery from mobile devices
• Fixes for AIF files & new quick action ‘convert to AIFF’
• Enhanced automatic backup functionality to make sure you never lose your Crates library
• Fixed Discogs connectivity issues
• Fixed Apple Music playback issues
• Faster performance and a refined user experience
• Numerous bug fixes & improvements

We hope these updates make Crates even more useful for you! Your feedback is always of paramount importance, so please let us know what you think or where we should focus next.

Introducing Gems!

Gems is a Crates feature aimed to help fellow music-heads share great music they’ve discovered and believe the community should discover as well.

Here’s a quick overview of how it works:

• Each user starts with a limited number of tokens that enable them to recommend tunes they find worth sharing.
  Other users will see the posted gems and choose to reveal, pass, or downvote
  If enough users choose to reveal your gems, you’ll earn reputation points and more tokens. If not, well… you can always try again.

For more, you can check out the in-app Guide (Help -> What are Gems?) or just click the Gem icon on the top left and go straight to the feed.

Updating to 1.6.1

Mac Users can get version 1.6 from the in-app updates, as well as from Downloads.

For this particular version, Windows Users should update only by downloading the installer from Downloads. Please don’t forget to exit both the Crates app and the Crates Server (at the tray) before running the installer.
As always, you can reach us at Crates Discord for any questions, feedback, requests or just hang!

With a brand new design and extended functionality, you can now use the extension to save & organise music you find online in Crates with one click.

You can then listen to your new music in a single playlist, independent of the streaming platform. We find it very handy for listening to new releases!

Supports links from Bandcamp, YouTube & YouTube Music, Soundcloud, Discogs, Spotify, Apple Music & more 😉

Get it at the Chrome Web Store.

New Video – Crates quick walkthrough

New video in store!

In this one, we do a quick walkthrough on how to get started and the basic features. More in-depth videos coming soon!

Crates Desktop version 1.4.2

In our new Crates Desktop release, besides many bug fixes and improvements, the main new feature is support for Google Drive.

You can now:

• Upload audio files & playlists to your personal Google Drive with one click
• Import files from Drive & listen/stream in Crates directly
• This is especially useful if, say, you want to make some tunes available to be streamed by another instance of Crates (maybe at work?).
• But what’s more crucial, is that we will build upon this feature, to offer seamless syncing of your Crates Library to all of your devices.

You can grab the update from within the app or the download page.

Our new website crates.app is officially up and running! It’s still work-in-progress, with a lot of incoming content, but be sure to check the support page with the first set of FAQs and knowledge base, why Crates and join the team – especially if you know anyone that would be interested!

We crave for your feedback! What do you like? What don’t you get? What is missing the most?

Our iOS app is now live!

The first version of our iPhone app is now publicly available at the App store.

Connect with your desktop app, sync your entire library, download or convert your audio files with a click over wifi, stream from your computer, Bandcamp, YouTube and more!

For now iOS app is only available to Crates Supporters. Are you a community user and want to upgrade to Supporter? Click here.

New Crates Desktop App Version 1.3.4

With important bug fixes and improvements, this is our best version yet! Make sure to update from within the app or the download page.

Note: if you have a really old version, you might want to reset your installation and start fresh – check how.

As always, reach us at Crates Discord for any questions, feedback, requests or just fun!