How to follow producers and songwriters for new releases
A lot of release tracking advice assumes you discover music in the most obvious way: you like an artist, you follow that artist, and you wait for the next release.
That works fine until it doesn't.
For plenty of listeners, the real thread is not the main artist at all. It is the producer whose drum programming keeps showing up on your favorite records. It is the songwriter who keeps popping up on the hooks you replay. It is the mixing engineer who seems to make everything sound bigger, warmer, or sharper in exactly the way you like.
Once you start listening like that, the usual "follow the artist and check Release Radar" workflow starts to feel shallow.
The problem is simple: most music apps are built around front-facing artist profiles, while a lot of the people who shape your taste live in the credits.
That means if you want to keep up with producers, songwriters, and other contributors, you need a slightly different system.
The good news is that you do not need to do it the hard way forever.
Why this is harder than it should be
Spotify has become more useful here than it used to be, and that matters. On its support pages, Spotify says it shows all delivered song credits from the metadata a label or distributor sends in, including producers, engineers, songwriters, and featured artists. Spotify also says songwriter credits are only clickable when the songwriter has a Songwriter Page and a connected Written By playlist, and that not all songwriter credits are clickable yet.
That is real progress. But Spotify's core listening flow is still centered around the obvious objects in the app: songs, albums, artists, playlists, genres, moods, and profiles. That is what Spotify's own Search help page lists as the main things you can search for.
In other words, the app is built around what you want to play right now, not around building a deep contributor-tracking workflow.
The same thing shows up in release notifications.
Spotify's own support pages describe Release Radar as a playlist that updates every Friday and gives listeners new music from artists they follow, artists they listen to, and other artists Spotify thinks they will like. For artists, Spotify also notes that followers get songs from a new release in Release Radar, and that only songs where you are a main or featured artist are eligible.
That is useful. But it also tells you what the system is optimized for.
It is optimized around artist follows and main release attribution, not around the wider network of people who worked on the record.
So if the person you care about is a producer, songwriter, session player, or engineer, the default tools often leave you doing extra work.
What "following" a producer or songwriter actually means
It helps to be clear about the goal before you start.
When most people say they want to follow a producer or songwriter, they usually mean one of three things:
- they want to know when that person is credited on a new release
- they want a simple way to listen through the releases that person touched
- they want to discover adjacent artists, labels, and collaborators through that person's work
That is not quite the same as following a solo act.
A producer may work across five genres in a month. A songwriter may have credits on singles you would never find through your normal artist follows. A mixing engineer may never be the public face of a release at all.
That is why the normal artist-follow model breaks down.
You are not really trying to follow a brand. You are trying to follow a pattern inside the credits.
The manual method that actually works
If you want to start today without changing tools, there is a manual approach that works surprisingly well.
It is not perfect. It does take some attention. But it will immediately make your listening feel less random.
1. Start with the people you already notice
Do not begin with a giant list.
Start with five to ten names you already trust.
These should be people whose work you already recognize across multiple releases. Maybe it is a producer you keep seeing on records you save. Maybe it is a writer who shows up on a specific kind of pop song. Maybe it is a mastering engineer whose name you started noticing once you went down a niche rabbit hole.
The point is to begin with signal, not volume.
If you start by trying to track everyone, you will build a messy system and stop using it.
2. Use Spotify to spot the first layer of credits
Spotify is still a useful starting point because it is where most people are already listening. It is also more usable for this than it once was, now that song credits are surfaced more clearly and some songwriter credits can be clickable.
When you land on a track you love, check the credits and note the names that keep repeating.
This part is not about doing a full archival deep dive. It is just about training your ear and your memory.
Over a week or two, you will usually start noticing patterns:
- one producer keeps showing up across a whole scene
- one songwriter seems to bridge artists you already like
- one engineer is attached to records with a similar sound
That first layer is enough to create a short list.
3. Use Discogs when you want the fuller picture
This is where things get much more useful.
Tracknack's own product pages are pretty direct about why it uses Discogs: looking at Discogs lets it go deeper into album credits and uncover collaborations that are easy to miss if you only look at the front-facing artist profile.
That lines up with how Discogs structures its data.
Discogs' database guidelines state that credits for roles in the Discogs Credit List go in the main credit section or the tracklist credits under each track. They also note that some roles are indexed and appear on artist pages by role. Discogs gives "Producer" as an example of an indexed role that shows up in the "Production" section of an artist page.
That makes Discogs genuinely useful for tracing contributor networks.
But there is an important catch.
Not every role behaves the same way. In the same credits guidelines, Discogs lists "Written By" among its non-linked credits. So while the information can still be present in the credit section, it is not always surfaced in the same easy, browseable way as an indexed role like Producer.
That matters because it explains why songwriter tracking often feels a little more fragmented than producer tracking.
The data may exist. The workflow is just not always as smooth.
4. Keep one simple watchlist
Once you have a few names, put them in one place.
Do not overbuild this.
A simple note, a pinned text file, or a lightweight spreadsheet is enough. The format matters much less than the habit.
For each person, keep only what is actually useful:
- name
- role
- a couple of anchor artists or labels you associate with them
- a short note on why you care
That last point is more useful than people expect.
If you write "always shows up on airy UK garage vocals" or "co-writes the kind of left-field pop I keep saving," you give yourself a reason to keep the person on your list.
Without that, the list becomes a pile of names.
5. Track labels too, not just people
This is the step many listeners skip, and it is one of the highest leverage ones.
If you care about producers and writers, there is a good chance you also care about the labels, imprints, or scenes where their work tends to surface.
Sometimes the cleanest way to catch a contributor is not to track the individual directly. It is to watch the label ecosystem around them.
That is especially true in electronic music, niche rap scenes, indie subgenres, and anywhere else where collaborators move through the same orbit repeatedly.
Following the right label can do more for your discovery than following twenty loosely related artists.
6. Review the list regularly and cut hard
Most people make one mistake here: they keep adding names and never remove any.
That turns a smart listening system into clutter.
Every few weeks, ask yourself a blunt question: did following this person actually lead me to music I cared about?
If the answer is no, cut them.
A smaller, sharper list is always better.
Where the manual method starts to fail
The manual approach is good enough to prove the idea. It is not good enough if you want it to become part of your normal listening routine.
Here is where it starts to break.
Credits are not the same across every source
Spotify, release metadata, label copy, and databases do not always surface the same information in the same way.
Some releases are richly credited. Some are thin. Some roles are easy to browse. Some are technically present but harder to follow cleanly.
You can build around that, but you cannot pretend it is frictionless.
You spend too much time checking, not listening
This is the biggest practical problem.
Once your list gets longer than a handful of people, manual checking becomes repetitive. You stop using the system because it starts to feel like admin.
That is usually the point where people fall back to random discovery and miss half the things they wanted to catch.
Name ambiguity gets annoying fast
This is an unglamorous but real problem.
Common names, aliases, alternate spellings, and role-specific credits can make it hard to know whether you are looking at the right person.
Even when the data is there, the confidence is not always there.
Songwriter tracking is often the messiest part
Producer credits are often easier to trace because some databases surface them more directly.
Songwriter credits can be present without being equally easy to browse or monitor. That does not make the effort pointless, but it does mean your workflow needs to account for it.
If you are relying entirely on manual checks, writers are usually where the process starts feeling brittle.
The better workflow if you want this to be sustainable
Once you know that contributor-based discovery works for you, the next step is not "be more disciplined." It is reducing the amount of manual work.
The practical version looks like this:
- keep following the main artists you already care about
- keep an eye on labels that consistently release music in your lane
- use credits to expand your map of who matters
- let a tool handle the repeat checking where possible
That last step is the difference between a clever idea and a workflow you will still be using in six months.
Tracknack is built around exactly this gap.
On its homepage, help pages, and feature pages, Tracknack is clear that it does not stop at solo artists. It lets you follow producers, songwriters, session musicians, mixing engineers, and record labels. It also says it searches Spotify and Discogs, and that looking at Discogs helps it go deeper in album credits.
That matters because it shifts the job from "remember to keep checking credits" to "set the people and labels you care about once, then let the system keep watching."
Tracknack also creates and updates a dedicated Spotify playlist when it finds new releases, and it can send email updates when tracks are added.
That solves the two biggest problems with manual tracking:
- you do not have to keep checking manually
- the listening destination is already waiting for you in Spotify
In practice, that is the real quality-of-life improvement.
A lot of tools can tell you something came out. Fewer make it easy to actually listen through what changed without rebuilding the context every time.
A simple way to set this up without overthinking it
If you want a clean starting point, use this structure:
Your core list
These are the producers, writers, or engineers whose names consistently point you toward music you already love.
Keep this list small.
Think of it as your highest-confidence signal.
Your orbit list
These are labels, recurring collaborators, and adjacent contributors who tend to overlap with the core list.
This is where new discovery happens.
You are not expecting every release to land. You are using the orbit to widen the net a little without losing the shape of your taste.
Your listening destination
Have one place where all of this lands.
If new releases end up scattered across notes, tabs, bookmarks, and half-remembered searches, the system will not hold.
The smoother the path from "that looks relevant" to "press play," the more likely you are to keep using it.
A reality check before you go too deep
Credit-based discovery is powerful, but it is easy to make it worse than it needs to be.
A few things are not worth doing.
Do not try to follow every credited person
More names do not automatically mean better discovery.
A lot of credits are one-off, highly situational, or only loosely connected to what you actually like. If you follow everyone, your signal gets diluted fast.
Track the people who repeatedly lead you somewhere good.
That is the whole point.
Do not treat all roles as equally useful
A producer you trust may be a very strong signal. A writer may be a strong signal in one genre and a weak one in another. Some credits are deeply predictive of your taste. Others are just trivia.
Be honest about the difference.
This works best when you track the roles that actually matter to your ear.
Do not assume the credits are a perfect map
Credits are useful. They are not flawless.
Some are missing. Some are inconsistent. Some are harder to surface cleanly depending on where you look.
Build a system that is useful, not one that depends on perfect metadata.
Do not turn it into homework
If the system makes you feel organized but stops making you excited to listen, it is too complicated.
The goal is still the same as it was on day one: hear more music you care about, sooner.
Final thoughts
If you discover music through the people behind the record, artist-only tracking will always feel incomplete.
That does not mean you need a giant research habit. It just means you need a better workflow.
Start small. Notice the names that keep earning your attention. Use credits to map the real connections in your listening. Follow labels when they give you a cleaner signal than artists. And once you know the pattern works, stop doing the repetitive parts by hand.
That is really the whole shift.
You are not trying to become a metadata archivist.
You are trying to build a release-tracking setup that matches how you actually discover music.
If producers, songwriters, and other contributors are the thread running through your taste, your tracking system should reflect that.
Sources and notes
The factual points in this article were checked against the official product pages and documentation linked below on February 26, 2026.