tracker

Noun

tracker (plural trackers)

1. (US) A person employed to follow and monitor a political rival.
   • While she and Mr. Fetterman were often in different places, she would turn up at events early so she could shoot and post photos of the crowds, the lines, the people. At most events there was a tracker: a guy from the Oz team who monitored the goings-on.2022 December 17, Judith Newman, “John Fetterman’s TikTok Whisperer”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 24 Dec 2022
2. (Australia) An Indigenous Australian employed by the law to track down fugitives and missing persons.
   • The police picked him up, reared him, and he had been a tracker ever since, except for periodical walk-abouts.1937, Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, published 1947, page 6
3. In an organ, a light strip of wood connecting (in path) a key and a pallet, to communicate motion by pulling.
4. A type of computer software for composing music by aligning notes or samples on parallel timelines.
   • Trackers have broken out of the demoscene, are are^([sic]) now in use by thousands of professional musicians. It's not uncommon to hear about people using trackers on DJ forums, and electronic music production communities[…]2004, dilvie, “new.scene.org”, in alt.music.mods (Usenet)
   • Although there were a few game companies outside the Amiga scene that used a tracker format (Epic Mega-Games, for instance), the majority used the better-supported MIDI.2008, Karen Collins, Game sound
5. A musician who writes music in a tracker.
   • You can always find musicians. There are more trackers than coders, pixelers, organizers, couriers, and designers combined.1999, Adrian Dunn, “Re: Using a scanned picture in your demo”, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos (Usenet)
6. A computer program that monitors something.
   1. (file sharing) Server software that coordinates peers in the BitTorrent protocol.
7. A tracker mortgage.
8. (in-compounds) An album with the specified number of tracks.
   • "Typical" is the best song on this nine-tracker, and ironically, the record itself is good, but typical.1985, Maximum Rocknroll, number 24