Methodology

We track Discogs (catalog metadata + Marketplace listings), eBay (Browse API), Bandcamp (HTML scrape, hard-rate-limited), Juno, MusicStack, CDandLP, Amazon (PA-API 5), CDJapan, Walmart, Target, Reverb, Rough Trade, plus a curated list of boutique pressers — Mondo, Third Man, Sacred Bones, Numero, Light in the Attic, Blood Records, Levitation, Sub Pop, Stones Throw, Ninja Tune, Disk Union (via WorldShopping).

Listings are sorted strictly by all-in delivered price in your selected currency. Affiliate status has zero weight. Ties are broken by seller rating, then by recency.

Where the source provides a shipping cost, we use it. Where it doesn't, we estimate using average cost-by-region tables we maintain per source. If we estimate, we say so.

We normalize raw condition strings to the Goldmine standard (M, NM, VG+, VG, G+, G, F, P). Sources that don't sell in Goldmine (eBay's “Used,” Amazon's “Acceptable”) are mapped conservatively — i.e., when in doubt we map down, not up.

The top 1,000 albums by traffic refresh every 6 hours. The rest refresh every 24 hours. Bandcamp is rate-limited harder than the rest because they don't have a public API.

The Discogs API forbids using its content "to drive traffic to non-Discogs sites." We interpret that as: use Discogs for catalog metadata + linking back to Discogs Marketplace listings; never use Discogs API responses to populate competitor listings or to suppress Discogs in favor of others. If Discogs ever clarifies otherwise, we'll comply.