Record Club, the Musical Equivalent of Letterboxd, Is Right in Many Ways.
Letterboxd created a cozy online space for film lovers —those who truly appreciate the art form and want to compile lists, compile ratings, and share their opinions on films with others. Its success led to the emergence of similar platforms, such as Binge .
Record Club, which opened just a couple of years ago, continues to grow and attract more and more attention as a potential Letterboxd alternative for music lovers. Music has been a big part of my life since my teens—on cassettes, CDs, MP3s, and streaming services—so I was eager to give it a try.
Initial verdict after a few days of use: it definitely has a lot going for it, from the elegant interface to the depth of its listening history. If you’re looking for a place to share your musical preferences and track your listening, it’s worth checking out.
The Record Club app is free and ad-free, but a $4/month subscription is available to support the project. This includes additional features such as improved playlist management and the ability to choose preferred cover art for your library. You also get extensive personalized statistics and the ability to add personalized notes to your releases.
Record Club is easy to navigate.
When you first register with Record Club, you’ll be quickly shown the app’s interface and features. Both the web and mobile versions are well-designed, with plenty of white space and clear, bold text that’s easy to read. You can immediately see what’s popular with other users, upcoming releases, and reviews left on the platform.
Clicking on any album will provide you with a wealth of information about it. It includes a track list, as well as information about the album’s popularity on the Record Club network (its average rating and number of listeners, as well as reviews). You can also find out its original release date and total length.
It’s all very user-friendly, allowing you to navigate, search, and interact. Follow another user’s link (you’ll be offered options to follow once you start), and you’ll see what they’re currently listening to, their top five favorite albums, reviews of their releases, and upcoming releases they plan to listen to.
By default, your profile will be visible; you can make changes to it by clicking your avatar (in the upper right corner) and then selecting Settings > Profile . Go to Settings to manage certain aspects of Record Club, and in the Privacy section, you can choose what is displayed on your profile or make it private (so only those who know your username can find you).
You can import your previous listening data from Rate Your Music or Last.fm (which I particularly like ), and Spotify import is apparently coming soon. Data from your Record Club can be exported as needed, so you don’t have to worry about your listening history remaining there forever.
The headers at the top of the web interface lead to the platform’s key sections: “Browse ” (for discovering new music), “Community” (for seeing what other listeners are doing), and “Activity” (for sharing feedback on your own listening). However, Record Club truly unleashes its potential when you start using its tracking and social interaction features, and that’s when comparisons to Letterboxd become most relevant.
How to get started with Record Club
You can start sharing what you’re listening to by going to the Record Club main page and clicking “Add a Release” in the “Your Rotation” section. In “Your Rotation,” you specify what you’re currently listening to, and it can include up to five albums (or singles, or EPs)—if you try to add a sixth, you’ll have to delete something else.
Finding new music couldn’t be easier: just enter the artist and album title, and it will quickly appear in the search results. You don’t need to save tracks in your feed to let Record Club know you’ve listened to them—you can click the three dots on any album cover and select “Listen” to log a listen.
There’s also a queue for music you want to listen to but haven’t yet, and the option to leave a rating or review. I usually leave ratings much more often than reviews because it’s easier: I usually struggle with the right words and tone for a review, and then end up not publishing it anyway.
It didn’t take me long to register music listening through the Record Club interface, as there were always links and recommendations that led me where I wanted to go. You can also use tags if you want to more precisely organize your music collection.
If you go to your profile page by clicking your avatar (top right) and then selecting “Profile,” you’ll see your top five albums of all time—just click “Edit” next to the relevant section to make your selection. A cool feature: if you click the three dots next to your top five albums, you can save these selections as images to share on other platforms.
I also enjoy making lists. Click “Create” at the top of the web interface, and you can select “List” to start creating public or private lists. You can organize your favorite albums by genre, create a compilation of songs for a specific band, the best double albums of all time, or anything else you like.