The best apps to track books, films, music and concerts (2026)

There is no app that does all four categories perfectly: for books, films and music there are excellent specialists with years of database-building and large communities behind them, and alongside those there is a handful of all-in-one apps — of which MyCultBox is the only one that also treats concerts as a full category. This guide lines up thirteen apps on what they track, what they cost, which platforms they run on and which imports they can handle, and says for each app where it is better than the rest.

First decide: one app, or the best app per category?

The trade-off is simple. Specialists win on depth: Letterboxd has reviews from millions of film watchers, Discogs knows the pressing quality of every pressing, Concert Archives has a concert database that no general app comes close to. If you mostly read, you are better off with a book app — full stop.

One app wins on overview. You have one place to put things, one search bar, and one year in review in which the book you read in March sits next to the concert you saw in July. The more categories you track, the more that weighs: four accounts with four exports and four wrapped-style retrospectives is work you do not want.

There is also a middle road that many people take in practice: keep using the specialist for the category you are fanatical about, and put the rest in one app. Most all-in-one apps can import from the specialists, so that choice is reversible later.

The best app per category

Books: Goodreads and StoryGraph

Goodreads is free, does only books and runs on web, iOS and Android. It is the largest network of readers there is, and that is exactly where it wins: almost every book you look up already has hundreds of reviews, and by Goodreads' own account the recommendation engine runs on twenty billion data points. No all-in-one app, MyCultBox included, comes anywhere near that volume of opinions from other readers. The yearly reading challenge and the friends feed are why many people stay.

StoryGraph is the newer book app, also on web, iOS and Android, and also free at its core: tracking, statistics, filters, content warnings and recommendations are all in the free plan. Plus costs $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year and mainly adds extra charts and filters. You can import from Goodreads too, but the sources contradict each other on whether that is included in the free plan or only with Plus. What StoryGraph does better than every other app here: searching by mood and pace. You can ask for something funny and fast, or dark and slow, and that is a way of choosing books that no general culture app imitates.

Films: Letterboxd

Letterboxd does films, and emphatically not TV series — for those the app itself points you elsewhere. Free to use on web, iOS and Android; Letterboxd Pro costs $18.99 per year and Patron $48.99 per year according to the US App Store listing. The diary, the list culture and the writing quality of the reviews are irreplaceable: logging a film on Letterboxd means joining a conversation straight away. If films are your main category and you like reading what other people write, there is no reason to start anywhere else.

Music: RateYourMusic, Discogs and Last.fm

RateYourMusic is a community-built music and film database in which you rate, review, catalog and contribute to the database yourself; games run through the sister project Glitchwave. It is free to use, with an optional paid subscription that gives you extras such as faster chart updates and more playlists. The depth of the genre classification and the charts are the point here — for digging through a discography or an obscure subgenre, this is the place.

Discogs is about physical ownership. You catalog your records, CDs and cassettes for free, with a barcode scanner, a wantlist and — this is the unique part — the current market value of your collection, because the same site is also the largest marketplace for physical music. Apps for iOS and Android. If you collect vinyl, no general culture app does this for you.

Last.fm automatically tracks what you listen to ("scrobbling") through Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Tidal and Soundcloud. Free; Last.fm Pro costs €4.99 per month or €49.99 per year and adds advanced statistics, historical listening reports and the ability to edit scrobbles. The advantage is that you do not have to do anything: every track counts, not just the album you deliberately add.

Concerts: Concert Archives, Songkick and Setlist.fm

Concert Archives is a concert database by fans for fans, free with in-app purchases (Pro from $3.99 per month), through the website and apps in the App Store and Play Store. You add every concert and festival you have seen, with photos, videos and notes, plus a bucket list for the future. The database is enormous and the social side is aimed entirely at concertgoers — no broader app has that.

Songkick looks ahead instead of back: you follow artists and get a message when they play nearby, with links to tickets. Apps for iOS and Android. If what you mainly want is to know when something is on, Songkick was made for that; keeping track of your concert history is not what it is meant for.

Setlist.fm is a wiki with more than 10.5 million setlists, free, plus artist, venue and festival pages. You can mark on the site which show you were at. Where it is unbeatable: which songs were played that night, including encores and covers — facts that are not recorded in full anywhere else.

All in one app

Achriom

Achriom covers books, films, albums, TV series, anime, podcasts and games in one library, on web, iOS and Android. Free with an unlimited number of items and ten AI messages per month; Pro costs $9.99 per month or $99 per year. It imports from Goodreads, Letterboxd, Trakt, Apple Music and AniList, and on iOS you can scan your physical bookshelf. That is the broadest category range in this list and the only one that treats anime and podcasts as categories of their own — if you track those two, Achriom is the logical choice. Concerts are not included.

Shelf

Shelf connects to Spotify, Netflix, Apple Music, Letterboxd, Goodreads, Crunchyroll, Disney+ and YouTube Music, and automatically builds a timeline out of that of what you watch, read, listen to and play, with weekly and monthly summaries. Free with in-app purchases. Its strong point is that automatic connecting: you barely have to enter anything. A drawback for some readers here: the App Store listing mentions no Android version.

Libib

Libib is a cataloging app for books, films, music, video games and board games, on web, iOS and Android. The free plan goes up to 5,000 items in a maximum of 100 collections; Pro costs $9 per month or $99 per year and raises that to 100,000 items. With a fast barcode scanner and lending features, Libib is made for people who really catalog what they own — a classroom library or a large home collection. That free ceiling of 5,000 items is by far the highest here.

Trakt

Trakt is the standard for TV series and films: it connects to media players and automatically tracks which episodes you have watched, with a calendar for what is coming. Free at its core, with a paid VIP subscription. If you want to track TV series — and certainly if you watch a lot of them — Trakt is the app, and no app in this guide does it better. Books, music and concerts are not in it.

Notion or a spreadsheet

Building it yourself remains a serious option: you decide exactly which fields you want, you can always export, and it costs nothing extra if you already use Notion or Google Sheets. You pay the price in maintenance: no covers, no metadata, no automatic import, and everything you enter you type yourself.

MyCultBox

MyCultBox tracks four categories: books, films, music and concerts. It is a web app (PWA) in Dutch and English; there is no native app in the App Store or Play Store. You can import from a Goodreads CSV, a Letterboxd export, setlist.fm for your concerts, and through library synchronization with Apple Music, Spotify and Roon. Metadata comes from ISBNdb, Google Books and Open Library for books, TMDB for films, Apple Music, Spotify, Discogs and MusicBrainz for music, and setlist.fm for concerts. You can publicly share individual items, lists and a "Year in Culture" retrospective. Free up to 100 items without a credit card; Pro costs €4.99 per month or €49.99 per year, with a fourteen-day trial of the Pro features (the limit of 100 items stays in place during that trial).

You can track TV series too — they live under films and get their metadata from TMDB — but as a title, not episode by episode as in Trakt. What it does not do: no app in a store, and the community is small — you will not find the mountains of reviews of Goodreads or Letterboxd here. It is meant for people who track concerts just as seriously as albums and films, and want those four things in one place.

Comparison table

Which should you choose?

Do you mostly read? Goodreads for the reviews and the friends feed, StoryGraph if you want to choose by mood and want better statistics.

Do you mostly watch films? Letterboxd, and use something else alongside it for the rest if you have to.

Do you want to track TV series episode by episode? Trakt — MyCultBox tracks a series as a single title; Trakt does it per episode, automatically.

Do you collect physical music? Discogs, for the valuation and the marketplace. Do you mostly stream? Last.fm, because then you do not have to enter anything.

Do you go to concerts and want them in one overview next to your albums, books and films? Then MyCultBox was made for your situation. Do you only want your concert history, as complete as possible and free? Concert Archives.

See also: An app to track concerts: 5 apps compared and A Goodreads alternative that also tracks your films, music and concerts.