Band organisation: setlist apps, BandHelper — and what none of them covers

Building setlists, lyrics and chords on a tablet, dates that bandmates accept or decline: there are ready-made apps for all of it. BandHelper also covers finances, contacts and stage plots; a band of two to five people pays 40 dollars a year for the smallest plan there and 80 dollars for every feature.

These apps manage the repertoire that already exists. How a riff on someone's phone becomes a song, and who owns which share of it, does not appear on their feature pages. We compared what the providers state on those pages themselves. Produser is our own product; what we say about it comes from us.

What does BandHelper cost?

BandHelper charges by band size and feature level, in US dollars. For two to five people Basic costs 40 dollars a year or 4 dollars a month, Plus 60 or 6 dollars, Pro 80 or 8 dollars. Basic covers the repertoire only, Plus adds dates and contacts, Pro adds finances, checklists, files, stage plots and a practice log. For solo musicians BandHelper starts at 16 dollars a year.

One subscription covers every member on every device. The prices apply to payments on the website; in the apps they can be higher because of app store fees. The trial runs for 30 days with every feature and without payment details. A subscription renews only if you switch that on, and an expired account is kept for two years.

What BandHelper does well goes beyond the setlist: songs with chords, tempo and starting pitch, auto-scrolling on stage, MIDI and foot switches, backing tracks and click. For practice, recordings can be played in a loop, slower or at a different pitch.

OnSong, SetBook and Setlist Helper: setlist apps compared

OnSong runs on Apple devices only: iPhone, iPad and Mac. Essentials costs 29.99 dollars a year or 3.99 dollars a month for two devices, Premium 59.99 or 5.99 dollars for four devices, plus tax in both cases. Premium adds annotations, backing tracks and control of other devices on stage.

SetBook ties setlists to gig planning. Invitations go out by email or SMS, including to substitute players without an account of their own. Dates flow into Google or Apple calendars through a feed, and an overview shows which gigs have been paid. On the web SetBook costs 9.99 dollars a month or 99 dollars a year, in the iOS app 11.95 dollars a month; the 14-day trial needs a card.

Setlist Helper works without a subscription: the apps for iPhone, iPad and Android are free, and a one-time upgrade unlocks the full songbook and syncing. In the German App Store the full version costs 17.99 euros once; the website names no price. Set List Maker, the older app from BandHelper's developer, is no longer getting new features: the developer's history page records the decision, dated 23 May 2024.

What none of the apps covers: from riff to song with agreed shares

The feature pages of BandHelper, OnSong, SetBook and Setlist Helper describe songs that already exist: with lyrics, chords, tempo and a reference recording. How a song comes about does not appear there. BandHelper stores voice memos and recordings on a song; who contributed which part is not something its page talks about.

At the latest when a song is registered with a collecting society such as GEMA, or before the release, someone asks who owns which share. How a split sheet answers that question is covered in Split sheets for bands.

What Produser does for songwriting

In the portal a song starts as an idea: a video or voice memo from a phone, or a recording made right on the page. For each recording you note whose part it is, the tuning and the tempo. Whoever has to learn the part plays it at half or three-quarter speed, sets an A–B loop over the difficult bars and pins notes to a moment in the recording.

Ideas become a composition. Several ideas can go into the same song, such as a riff, a bridge and the lyrics, and the composition shows each of them with its author, date and recordings. Next to the split sheet the portal suggests the people named in those ideas. You set roles and shares yourselves, because recording an idea does not by itself make someone an author of the song.

Rehearsal tracks you record yourselves hang on the song: two guitars playing the rhythm, a version without vocals, a click. They also play at half speed and in a loop, and they stay inside the band; they never appear on the website. When you mark the song as released, the portal offers to create a matching release on the website.

The limits: Produser has no setlists, no chord charts with auto-scroll, no MIDI, no stage view and no finances. A stage plot goes into the press section of your website as a file; you draw it elsewhere. The portal runs in the browser, on a phone too. In early access we set up each band by hand, the first three months cost nothing, and prices will be announced before they apply.

The short version

BandHelper costs a band of two to five people 40 to 80 dollars a year and covers repertoire, dates, money and stage plots. OnSong runs on Apple devices only, SetBook ties setlists to gig invitations, and Setlist Helper works without a subscription. For practising with recordings, BandHelper and Produser both offer a loop and slower playback, and Produser adds notes pinned to a moment in the recording. None of the apps' feature pages names the path from idea to song with the author and date of each idea. That is what Produser is for; for the stage, keep a setlist app.