You don't need another article telling you how to sequence songs. You've been doing this, maybe for years, maybe for decades. You know your catalogue, you know your audience, and you know what works on stage.
What you probably don't have is a tool that keeps up with how you actually think about setlists. One that lets you build, rearrange, and share a running order as fast as the ideas come, and keeps your whole team in sync while you do it.
That's what Setlist Management is built to do. Not to teach you how to build a setlist, but to get out of the way and let you build one faster, with more information at your fingertips, and with everyone on the same page before you hit the stage.
Here's what that looks like in practice.
Your Whole Catalogue, Always Within Reach
Most setlist decisions start with a mental flip through your repertoire. You know you need something up-tempo in a major key to follow that ballad, but you're working from memory, and memory has limits when you're choosing from 80 or 120 songs.
In Setlist Management, your entire song library lives in one place. Every song carries its metadata, including BPM, key, duration, genre, artist, and notes, and you can filter and sort by any of it. Need something at 130 BPM in G? Filter, scan, drag it into position. That search-and-slot process that used to take five minutes of staring at a spreadsheet now takes seconds.
You can mark favourites, track how many times each song has been performed, and see when you last played it. Over time, your library becomes a living picture of your repertoire. Not just what you can play, but what you have been playing and where the gaps are.
Drag, Drop, Done
Building a setlist should feel like moving pieces on a board, not filling out a form. Setlist Management uses drag-and-drop ordering. Grab a song, move it where it needs to go. Decided the opener isn't right? Drag it to slot six. Want to swap songs four and nine? Just move them. The running order updates instantly, and the set timing recalculates automatically.
You can insert breaks and encores, link songs together for seamless transitions, and add per-song notes that your whole band can see, including key changes, arrangement cues, who counts in, and whatever each song needs.
There's also full undo and redo. Experimented with a different running order and it didn't work? Step backwards through your changes until you're back where you started. No rewriting, no second-guessing what the previous version looked like.
Real-Time Sync Across Your Team
This is where things change fundamentally.
In most bands, the setlist lives in one person's head (or one person's phone) until it gets shared, usually via a screenshot in the group chat, or a printed sheet handed out at soundcheck. By that point, it's too late for meaningful input.
With Setlist Management, your entire team sees the setlist the moment you start building it. Every change, whether it's a reorder, a new song, or a note added, appears on every connected device in real time. Your guitarist can see the running order on their phone while you're building it on your laptop. Your drummer can flag a problem before it becomes an on-stage surprise.
Team members have roles (admin, editor, viewer) so you control who can make changes and who's just following along. And there's a full activity log, so you can see who changed what and when. No more "I thought we agreed to drop that song."
Audio Right Where You Need It
Every song in your library can have audio attached, including reference recordings, backing tracks, rehearsal takes, and demos. Upload MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC, OGG, or AAC files directly, and they're linked to the song.
Hit play and the right track plays. Skip to the next song in the setlist and the next track loads. You get transport controls, volume, playback speed (half-speed for learning parts, 1.5x for quick run-throughs), and cue points. Set a precise start and end time within a track so you hear exactly the section you need without scrubbing.
There's also Apple Music integration. Search for tracks, pull in album artwork, and preview or play full songs directly in the app. If you haven't uploaded your own audio, the app falls back to Apple Music automatically. It means every song in your setlist has playback available, one way or another.
Audio streams from the server, so your bandmate in another city can listen to the same reference recording you're hearing. Files cache locally for offline playback too, which is useful when the venue Wi-Fi inevitably lets you down.
Show Mode: Built for the Stage
Show Mode strips everything back to what matters during a performance: the current song, the next song, and the controls to move between them.
The text is large and high-contrast, designed for reading at a distance under stage lighting. You get a song counter ("Song 5 of 14"), elapsed and remaining time, and a progress bar. Previous, next, play, pause, stop. Your screen stays awake automatically, so there's no tapping to keep it alive between songs.
If you're running the show, you can share a Follow Along link or QR code. Crew, techs, or guests scan it and see the setlist progress in real time, showing the current song, timing, and what's coming next, without needing an account or any setup. It's a live view of where you are in the set, updating as you go.
Listening Party: Rehearse From Anywhere
Not every band member is in the same room. Setlist Management's Listening Party lets you run a synchronised playback session. The host controls play, pause, and song selection, and every participant hears the same thing at the same time.
There's built-in voice chat, so you can talk through arrangements while you listen. It's not a replacement for a rehearsal room, but for running through a setlist before a tour, reviewing a new song's placement in the set, or workshopping the running order with a bandmate who's 200 miles away, it's significantly more useful than "play the track at the same time and hope for the best."
Participants join with a simple code, and no account is required. The host sees who's connected and controls the session.
PDF Export: Three Templates, One Tap
Sometimes you still need paper. The sound engineer wants a printed setlist. The venue manager needs a copy. Your keyboard player likes having a sheet on the stand as backup.
Setlist Management exports clean, formatted PDFs in three templates:
- Classic. Clean and straightforward, all the essential info
- Modern. A polished layout with more visual structure
- Stage. Optimised for on-stage readability, with optional city name and version number for tour use
Choose portrait or landscape, toggle which metadata to include (BPM, key, notes, album art), and adjust the font size. Preview it before you export. One tap and it's a PDF on your device, ready to print or share.
Gig Calendar and Performance History
Setlists don't exist in isolation. They're tied to gigs. Setlist Management has a built-in gig calendar where you can create events with date, venue, city, start time, load-in, soundcheck, and doors times. Link one or more setlists to each gig, and your schedule and your music stay connected.
After a show, mark the gig as performed. The app tracks performance stats for every song, including how many times you've played it, when you last played it, and which setlists it's appeared in. Over time, you build a clear picture of your live output: which songs are in heavy rotation, which ones haven't been aired in months, and what you played at a specific venue last time you were there.
You can import tour schedules from CSV too. Map your columns, preview the data, and load an entire run of dates in one go.
Timecode and Show Control
For productions that run to timecode, Setlist Management integrates with LTC input and AbleSet.
Feed LTC from your audio interface and the app decodes it in real time at 24, 25, 29.97df, or 30 fps. The setlist can auto-follow timecode position, so the current song advances automatically as the show runs. There's a live timecode display and signal quality monitoring.
The AbleSet bridge connects via WebSocket, syncing song position, section progress, and tempo from AbleSet into Setlist Management. If your show is driven by Ableton Live and AbleSet, your setlist tracks along automatically.
This is niche, but if you need it, you really need it, and it's built in, not bolted on.
Sharing Without the Friction
Generate a public share link for any setlist. Anyone with the link can view it, no login required. Handy for sending a setlist to a dep, a sound engineer, a festival organiser, or a manager who just wants to see what you're playing.
You can also generate a QR code for the same link, which is useful for posting on a merch table, adding to a poster, or displaying on a screen at the venue. Sharing can be disabled at any time.
Designed for People Who Already Know What They're Doing
Setlist Management isn't trying to replace your instincts or automate your creativity. The decisions that make a great setlist (the emotional arc, the crowd read, the gut feeling that says "this song needs to go here") are yours.
What the app does is eliminate the friction around those decisions. The searching, the calculating, the sharing, the version control, the "did everyone get the updated list?" All of that becomes instant. So the time you used to spend on logistics goes back into the creative work.
Whether you're a solo artist planning an acoustic set, a five-piece prepping for a weekend of pub gigs, or a touring band loading setlists for 40 dates across Europe, the process scales with you. Your library, your gig history, your team, your audio, all in one place, all in sync.
Setlist Management. Build setlists, sync your team, perform with confidence. Drag-and-drop creation, real-time collaboration, audio playback, show mode, PDF export, gig calendar, and more. Start free.