5 Best Apps For Managing Your Band 2024 – Manage Your Career

It’s easy to get lost in the details when you’re trying to run a band. There are so many aspects to keep on top of and so many people and personalities to keep in check.

Luckily, there are plenty of great apps that, when applied to your band, can seriously help you conquer the stress that comes with having to manage so many moving parts.

5 Key Areas Of Band Management

In this article, we’re going to look at 5 key band management topics and suggest our top app choices for each:

  1. Business Management – Clients, Bookings, Finances, Musician Wrangling, Set Lists, etc
  2. Music Recording – Get your songs recorded so you can promote your band
  3. Catalog Your Songs – Keep your song catalog organized so you can make pitches
  4. Book Rehearsals – Take the pain out of planning band rehearsals
  5. Find Gigs – Get in front of crowds to make your music make money

1. Band Business Management with Back On Stage App

Source: aexylium.it

Don’t get bogged down trying to manage the 100+ aspects of every single gig (yes, there are over 100!). There are many great apps that can help you keep everything organized. Our favorite app even automates a ton of your band management tasks so you can sleep soundly at night, not having to worry if you remembered to book a bassist for your gig this weekend.

Back On Stage is band management software for modern bandleaders. This web app works great on any device, and it provides more bells and whistles than we could ever talk about here.

Here’s a shortlist of features:

  1. Automatically book your musicians for gigs:
  2. Their powerful Auto-Book system automatically contacts each musician in your roster until you have someone booked for each position.
  3. Chat, Share Files, Manage Tasks
  4. Each musician booked for the gig can communicate, share files, and manage tasks right from within the context of a gig.
  5. Google Calendar Integration
  6. Anyone can sync their Back On Stage calendar with Google or Apple Cal, so no gig is forgotten.
  7. Schedule Social Media Posts:
  8. Right from within any booking, you can create and schedule social media posts through a build-in Hootsuite Integration.
  9. Embeddable Client Contact/Quote Form:
  10. Use their provided code to create a fillable form on your band website. When clients submit your form, you get notified, and all their info is automatically entered into your follow-up system.
  11. Auto-Generate Client Contracts & Invoices:
  12. It’s time-consuming and painful to build contracts and invoices. Back On Stage prefills these documents for you when you set up a booking.
  13. Build and Share Smart Set Lists:
  14. Load your lyric sheets, sheet music, reference recordings, video links, and more into your music library. Then build interactive setlists in a snap. Musicians don’t just see song names. They can click to view their sheet music, hear the tempo, listen to reference recordings, and so much more!
  15. Pay Musicians Automatically:
  16. One of the most impressive features is Auto-Pay – you can automatically send PayPal payments to your musicians at a time you specify. The system auto-generates their invoices too!

You really should do yourself a favor and check out Back On Stage. Their mission is to help brands succeed through better management of their business and internal systems. They’ve got loads of great resources for musicians and bands, too, like this great article with well over 30 band apps that will help you succeed!

2. Music Recording Made Easy With BandLab

BandLab is a free music recording app that is entirely online. It’s not just impressive because it’s the first completely online music recording tool to go mainstream, but it’s also free! If your brand needs to record its music, there’s no better place to start.

The company also sells audio interfaces that you can plug into the app to make your home or mobile recording a breeze. But they’re not necessary if you’ve already got the equipment you can use.

Just sign up for an account to get a recording. If you’re looking for an app like Garageband, but that is even more accessible, this might be it. Just check out this awesome list of features:

  1. Collaborate with a huge community of other musicians:
  2. Inside the app, you can share your songs to have others add to them or look around for other people’s songs that you can contribute to. Get those creative juices flowing!
  3. Advanced Features:
  4. Guitar/Bass amp simulation effects can make your home guitar recording sound amazing.
  5. Over 200 Virtual Instruments:
  6. Don’t have a big budget or skillset? No problem. Just grab yourself a cheap midi controller or keyboard, and you’ll have access to drum kits, pianos, and so much more.
  7. Sync To the Could:
  8. Don’t worry about your house burning down or your hard drive running out of space. Audio files are large – but now they don’t even need to take up space on your computer. They live in the cloud, so you can access them anytime, anywhere.
  9. Auto-Pitch:
  10. If you thought you couldn’t sing before…well, you probably still can’t, but this feature may help fool you into thinking you can (lol). But seriously, everyone wavers a bit here and there, and industry standards are for perfection these days, so get those vocal lines right on the money.

BandLab is a surefire solution to getting your band’s music recorded in an easy and affordable way. Collaborating is so easy that you’ll wonder how you ever managed without this app!

3. Catalog Your Songs In SongSpace

Source: kveller.com

Keeping track of all your various songs and their versions, as well as lyrics, is a real pain. On most computers, there’s just no way to do it elegantly.

And it’s not just about cataloging everything. Your system needs to be easily searchable so you can find things quickly when an opportunity comes along.

SongSpace is an amazing tool that lets you keep a clean catalog of all your songs and recordings. Here’s a list of features you’ll love:

  1. Keep Track Of Recorded Versions:
  2. You can attach various recordings to each song project to help you keep track of versions and changes.
  3. Collaborate With You Band:
  4. Your band members can also add their ideas to your lyrics and recordings.
  5. Pitch Your Music:
  6. Your music needs to get heard. You can send out song links directly from the app and monitor who has listened.
  7. Your Catalog In Your Pocket:
  8. Previously, your bulky computer was the only place you could really access your song catalog. But with this handy iOS or Android app, you can now access it anywhere. Never miss an opportunity again!

An artist’s life doesn’t have to be a messy life. Get your song catalog organized and you’ll have so much more thought space for creating that next batch of hit-worthy lyrics.

4. Book Rehearsals with Doodle

Source: pexels.com

Getting everyone’s calendars in sync to plan a rehearsal is a real pain. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to poll people to see which dates work best quickly?

Well, with Doodle, you can do just that.

The app (available on iOS, Android, or any browser) gives you an intuitive calendar to select your poll dates from making the setup process super easy. Then, just invite your band members to participate and watch as the results come in.

Source: pitchfork.com

Some things you’ll love about Doodle:

  1. Set up a date poll in less than 5 minutes
  2. Participates don’t need an account:
  3. This makes it super fast and more enticing for people to respond quickly
  4. Yes, No, and ‘If Need Be’ Options:
  5. Sometimes people can be flexible if they need to be, so having that ‘if need be’ option is super handy
  6. Everyone sees results in real-time:
  7. When anyone comes on to answer the poll, they’ll see the responses everyone else has already given. This is great for providing latecomers with the data they need to make the best selections that will be likely to work with everyone else
  8. Set a response deadline or send automatic reminders (paid):
  9. On a premium (paid) plan, you can even opt to send automatic reminders to people who haven’t yet answered and even set a response deadline

5. Find Gigs Using WeddingWire

Obviously, you have to be willing to play some cover songs if you really want to make a go-to wedding. But they are a great cash cow if you can pull together the right image and sound to appeal to wedding couples.

WeddingWire is a great place to list your band so that wedding couples can find you. Imagine if you were planning your own wedding and had to painstakingly sift through countless google search results for every single vendor you wanted to hire. That would be terrible!

WeddingWire has put together a huge assortment of wedding vendors in literally every city in the United States and Canada. It’s an invaluable tool for wedding couples, and they LOVE using it to plan their wedding…so if you want wedding gigs and you’re not listed there, you’re really shooting yourself in the foot.

Some great features you’ll love:

  1. List your band with photos, video, bio, and pricing:
  2. Capture the attention of wedding couples everywhere with that fancy new promo video you’ve got!
  3. Link to your social profiles and website for extra SEO juice:
  4. WeddingWire lets you link to your band website and social media channels. Take advantage of this free link to boost your band website’s SEO
  5. Collect and manage leads in one clean interface:
  6. Prospects can send you messages and quote requests right inside WeddingWire. You can save canned responses for faster replies and manage all your communicates right from inside the app.

If you want to be featured on top of WeddingWire searches, you can opt to pay a pricey fee to get yourself a premium account with this perk. Otherwise, the free plan has plenty of benefits too.

Just make sure to get yourself out there and open up this revenue stream for your band.

What Are Your Favorite Band Management Apps?

Source: pexels.com

Have you got some favorite apps you use to manage your band? Let us know in the comments below.

FAQ:

Q: What is the Best Band app for your business?

A: Slack is a great Band App as it is a collaboration hub bringing the right people to the right information so everyone is able to get their work done. Guarantee your team works together no matter where they are.

Q: What are the benefits of group apps for musicians?

A: Group members can access updates without being distracted by too many posts which you may get from using Social Media. Usually, admins will be able to see who has seen messages on a Band App and therefore can confirm each person accountable in the group. The must-have Band Apps are becoming more and more beneficial to a musician’s life.

Q: What digital tech tools do you use to co-manage your band?

A: While I’ve come to rely on a few dozen digital tech tools to co-manage our band, Fialta, here are 10 cloud-based free apps that are revolutionizing the music industry: Communication / Planning. 1. Slack Before getting on Slack, our band relied on iMessage for both planning purposes and random conversing.

Q: What devices does band helper integrate with?

A: BandHelper integrates with MIDI and DMX hardware, Bluetooth footswitches and audio apps. BandHelper is a cloud-based service with companion mobile apps designed to reduce the organizational burden of playing in a band.