Your crates are an early signal.

The record-store graph

hosaka treats underground retail as a curatorial network, not a distribution channel. A store's catalog — what it carries, what it keeps in rotation, what labels it's aligned with — is read as a signal about where attention in the underground is moving.

So is every other store's catalog, mapped the same way. The result is a graph: stores, labels, and artists connected by the fact of being stocked together, restocked together, and moving together over time. A store's own taste, expressed through its buying, becomes part of that map.

Retail moves early

Retail data is usually read as a rearview mirror on what already sold. That misses what actually happens in a well-run underground shop: a buyer picking something up for the bins, or restocking a title that's moving, is often acting on information the rest of the industry hasn't caught up to yet. hosaka treats that decision as a live signal.

As of 2026-08-13: underground retail alone surfaces 116,989 artists on hosaka's map — more than festival bookings contribute (68,046). Retail more broadly (beyond the specifically underground channel) adds another 3,451. Retail is one of 16 distinct kinds of signal hosaka combines onto the same artist identity.

Demand velocity

What matters isn't just that a store carries something. It's the movement: restocks, re-ups, what comes back into demand after going quiet. That movement is read alongside the other 15 kinds of signal hosaka tracks, all pointing at the same artist identity.

When a restock lines up in time with a DJ picking up a track, a radio station adding it, or a festival booking the act, hosaka can see that convergence directly — because every signal points at the same identity rather than sitting in its own separate system.

That agreement is rare and meaningful. Among the artists hosaka watches most closely (as of 2026-08-13): 13,352 had two independent kinds of signal, 1,733 had three, 257 had four, 40 had five or more. The more signals agree, the shorter the list, the earlier the call.

Identity, not catalog numbers

The artist identity hosaka tracks is its own record, built from public traces. Catalog numbers, label IDs, and database entries attach later, if ever. The artist a store takes a chance on before there's a Discogs page or a distributor SKU is exactly the artist hosaka is built to track, from the first trace onward.

That design choice matters for retail specifically. Underground stocking decisions often precede any formal catalog infrastructure, and hosaka is built to catch those artists at the edges, before the metadata catches up.

What a store gets

Visibility into what's building across the wider network (radio, DJ sets, festivals, press, reposts) before it shows up in year-end lists or trade coverage.

Context on the artists already in the store's own crates: where else that artist is showing up, and how that presence is changing.

And their own curation reflected back as what it actually is: an early indicator in its own right, sitting alongside the other signals hosaka tracks.

What this is not

hosaka is not a point-of-sale system, and it does not collect (or want) sales data, revenue, or transaction records. The signals it draws on come from public traces: what's listed, stocked, and restocked in the open, never a store's private register.

Worth being direct about where this stands: the system underneath is live and deep. This is real, running data. The store-facing product built on top of it is earlier: metering is built and billing is scaffolded, but there is no repeatable store-facing offering shipped yet. This page describes the signal as it exists today.

Get in touch: hello@hosaka.fm

Related: For labels · How it works