Organizing Your Band in One Place with BANDZONE?

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_{Update January 2025}

New Year, New Features in BANDZONE

• BANDZONE apps for iOS and Android have been available since January 2025, making the platform even easier to use on mobile.
• BANDZONE has launched its own YouTube channel, featuring tutorials and feature overviews, including explanations of more advanced functions. You now also get a face for BANDZONE – Tobi, the founder.
• A handy new feature is the PDF configurator for setlists, allowing for custom setlist design and print-ready downloads.
• The event management function has been optimized – you can now duplicate existing events to easily carry over last year's gigs into the new calendar year.
• For better control over data access, files can now be made visible only to admins.

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A band is often a microcosm of chaos. When a group of creative minds comes together, things can easily become unorganized. Without a structured system, even the most brilliant musicians can trip over their own lack of organization. BANDZONE presents itself as a web-based, multi-tool solution to bring order to the band organization jungle. The mobile-friendly web version has been publicly available since early 2023, and in November 2024, the beta version of the iOS and Android apps was launched. After the beta, they’re expected to be available to everyone by the end of the year. We tested the current web version thoroughly.

Come On In – Clear and to the Point

What immediately catches the eye – quite literally – is the clean and uncluttered visual design, which also applies to the clearly structured navigation. Every function can be accessed with just a few clicks, sometimes even in multiple ways. The color scheme used for status indicators, messages, and features is also consistent and intuitive.

Band Info Area

In this section, the first menu item lets you enter general band info and notes. You can also upload files like band photos or videos. This part is all about presenting your band – similar to an electronic press kit. That presentation can be in the form of text or uploaded files. Additionally, the band dashboard displays upcoming events and recent changes to songs, setlists, and gigs.

Well-Thought-Out and Practical

Smart features can be found under the "General Settings" tab. Following the principle of "too many cooks spoil the broth," you can disable event availability edits for regular band members with a single click. In simple terms: to change attendance status for events marked as "reserved" or "confirmed," admin rights are required. This is super helpful if multiple members are out hunting for gigs and coordination isn't exactly their strong suit. Double bookings? A thing of the past. Of course, band members can still request changes via a link instead of clicking the availability button. The result: You’re forced to communicate actively. And that’s a good thing.

Fees – Standard or Individual

This section deals with the payment (fee) setup, which can be entered as a standard amount per band member, or individually per event and per member. The feature – like many others – can be activated or deactivated as needed. If it’s deactivated, the entered data won’t be visible anymore, but it’s still stored. Should the tax office ever ask for details, the portal allows you to retrieve everything neatly.

Optional Notification Settings

Next up are the notifications when an event is created. Obviously, when something’s brewing – whether it’s a gig, a studio session, or just a rehearsal – everyone should know ASAP so they can prep and clear their schedules. But how communication happens varies from band to band. That’s why you can choose who gets notified and when.

Same goes for notifications about event changes. Some updates are relevant for all, others might be more like noise. But this is about raw facts, not small talk. The default setting can be toggled on or off – the option is always available.

Event Calendar with Download

Probably the most important part of this section: the calendar – and yes, you can export it to your own devices. Each band member (and even guest musicians) gets a personal calendar, showing only the events they’re needed for. So: if you're not marked as needed for an event, you won’t see it – not in BANDZONE, and not in the synced calendar. Calendar syncing can be turned on per band, and each member gets a unique subscription link that only contains their own data.

Good to know: the downloadable or synced calendar only includes minimal, non-sensitive info – like event title, date, time, location, event type, and a link back to BANDZONE. Any more sensitive info is only accessible through the protected BANDZONE area. Once the sync feature is turned off, the linked calendar stops updating. A cool bonus: these public calendar links can be shared with family, partners, etc., making personal scheduling a whole lot easier.

Email from Within the Portal

A super handy feature: in the Band Members & Team section, you can send emails directly to all or individual members straight from the portal. You can also invite new members easily via email.
They just need to accept the invite and set a password — and boom, they’re in.

Member-Specific Band Data

This wraps up the general section with “Your Data in the Band.” Here, it’s all about personal contact info for everyone involved: Name, email address, phone number, and physical address.

Fun fact on the side: You can also assign one or more icons to each member indicating the instrument they play. This helps with organizing setlists – especially when you can’t remember what that guy in the corner actually plays. Just look it up in the tool.

Songs and Setlists

This next section is all about songs and setlists. BANDZONE is already quite advanced here and still evolving – but there’s still room for improvement. For now, if users want to import multiple songs at once, they have to contact support. In the near future, this process will be built in and self-service. Songs can be rated, a feature especially loved by cover bands. This helps decide which new songs to add – and which old, dusty ones should be retired.

There’s also a smart workflow tab system:

• Suggested
• Accepted
• In Preparation
• Active Repertoire
• Archived

You can assign specific instruments for each song, and add private notes per member, like:

• Patch numbers
• Tunings
• Lyric snippets
• Practice hints
• and more.

Once your songs are in BANDZONE, you can create and optimize your setlists and download them as XLS files, even in a GEMA-compliant format. A direct export or PDF configurator for stage-ready setlists isn’t available yet – but it’s a high-priority feature and already doable with a little manual tweaking.

The Real Meeting Point

The real hub of the platform is the calendar. It’s split into two tabs: Rehearsals and Gigs.

You can assign members to specific events and set unavailable dates – days when someone can’t make it, so no gigs or rehearsals can be booked. For XLS downloads, you don’t need to activate the calendar sync separately.

Another useful feature here is the "Venues" tab. Especially for bands that gig regularly, it’s super helpful to keep track of:

• available gear
• stage size
• venue details
  and so on.

Because let’s face it: after the gig is before the gig. And good prep is everything.

Support and Development

BANDZONE’s journey is far from over – and that’s one of its biggest strengths.

The developers are actively improving the platform. Suggestions and feature requests from users are often implemented very quickly, as long as they don’t require major changes to the core system. Support is responsive and agile – and most importantly, they strive to stay musician-friendly. Their goal: Keep the tool functional and to the point — no unnecessary complexity.

Price vs. Value

BANDZONE’s pricing is fair and transparent – no fine print, no surprise subscriptions.

All packages include:

• every feature
• 8 GB of storage

Pricing is based only on the number of band members, and it’s always a flat rate per band – not per person. Here’s the breakdown:

• Mini: up to 4 members
  → €7.50/month or one-time €199
• Standard: up to 8 members
  → €9.50/month or €329 one-time
• Plus: up to 32 members
  → €18/month or €449 one-time

That means: even with 4+ members, it’s never more than €2 per member per month.

And the option for a one-time payment?
Let’s be honest — that’s pretty wild in a good way.

Pros and Cons

BANDZONE currently doesn’t offer offline functionality and isn’t designed as a live-use app for sheet music or lyrics – at least not yet. The focus is currently on administrative tasks for bands, away from live performance. To call that a disadvantage would be missing the point. First of all, there are already plenty of other apps that specialize in that, so competing there wouldn’t make much sense. And second, the creators of BANDZONE are closely tuned in to their users. In other words: let’s wait and see what’s next. There’s definitely potential for more.

Tool Review: Summary

Name: BANDZONE
Price: starting from €7.50

Conclusion

BANDZONE’s idea isn’t brand new – band and choir management tools have been around for a while.

But those are usually made for large groups, where one admin controls everything, and info just gets distributed top-down. BANDZONE is different. It focuses on bands that want to organize their data, their songs, their events themselves – collaboratively and efficiently. It works smoothly across all devices, skips unnecessary fluff, and boosts internal communication big time.

Pros

• Clean, intuitive design
• Centralized band organization
• Individual fee management
• Actively developed and user-driven
• Fair, predictable pricing
• Encourages real collaboration

Cons

• No offline mode (yet)
• No bulk song upload (yet)

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Author: Joern Petersen