The state of music workflow and collaboration apps

Back in July 2019, I wrote an essay for my newsletter about how the rising “no-code” movement in software development could also apply to every part of a music career, in terms of empowering everyday people with no formal musical training or connections to create, market and distribute a song from scratch.

Here’s my initial table:

Today’s database on artist collaboration and workflow apps focuses specifically on the first segment of music creation, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic where most artists and industry professionals are working and collaborating remotely.

If you ask an artist or industry professional what tools they use for managing remote collaboration and feedback around a given song, they’ll likely list any of a dozen different fragmented applications, many of which don’t talk to each other:

• Voice Memos or various DAWs for audio recording
• SoundCloud and email for sharing private audio links
• Dropbox, Box and WeTransfer for sending files
• Local disk drives for storing files
• Word documents or email for typing timestamped feedback

In a case study about Universal Music’s production music division, remote music collaboration startup Pibox illustrated nine different steps in the standard remote workflow process for sending files and gathering feedback — each of which could take a different app to get through. “Universal Production Music used to work with 8+ tools to wrap up just one project,” Pibox wrote on their blog. “That meant hours of switching between different channels, not to mention the subscription fees.”

There’s also been a lot of conversation in the industry over the past few years regarding challenges and holes in the music-metadata supply chain — whether that involves artists not recording the proper credits and rights information at source, or data getting lost or messed up along the way due to lack of standardization and a myriad of other operational issues. Adrien Stern, co-founder of music credits and workflow startup Reveel, claimed in a blog post last month that “labels spend 15–20% of their resources collecting, verifying and clearing metadata — and yet, over 75% of tracks have missing credits.”

There are a handful of tools in my database that focus on metadata, like Session (f.k.a. Auddly) and Reveel. Others focus more on streamlining a certain aspect of collaboration, such as recording (Audigo Labs) or cloud-based file storage, sharing and commenting (Pibox, Bounce, Byta, SendMusic). The common thread among all these different apps is a kind of workflow automation that emphasizes a centralized, shared paper trail and documentation of creative decisions, such that collaborators don’t just have to rely on hazy memory or an abstract sense of trust or good faith in their work.

It’s still unclear to me whether these apps will have a long-term business plan beyond just getting acquired by a bigger company, like how Spotify bought out SoundBetter (Splice is a major exception). But there’s enough entrepreneurial development in this space, and enough interest in helping artists master their businesses behind the scenes, to warrant more attention.

View the database below.