Getting Started

Follow these steps to get your first gig up and running with bandleader.app.

Step 1: Create Your Songbooks

Before you can create a gig, you need songs for your audience to choose from. Songbooks are your master lists of songs.

  1. Navigate to the Songbooks page from the admin sidebar.
  2. Create one or more songbooks (e.g., "Full Repertoire", "Karaoke Hits"). You can create different books for different types of shows.
  3. Add songs to your new songbooks. You can add them one-by-one or save time by importing a CSV file.

For more details on managing your song library, see the full Songbooks documentation.

Step 2: Create Your First Gig

A "gig" is an event where you can enable interactive features for your audience. Navigate to the Gigs page to get started.

  1. Click "Create Gig".
  2. Give your gig a name and a date.
  3. Go through the configuration options to enable features like Song Requests and Karaoke. For each feature, you must assign one of the songbooks you created in the previous step.
  4. If you have connected Stripe in your settings, you can also configure prices for paid features.

For a detailed breakdown of every option, check out the Gigs documentation.

Step 3: Activate the Gig

Once a gig is created, you must make it "Active" for it to appear on your main audience page (e.g., bandleader.app/your-client-id).

  • On the Gigs page, find the gig you want to go live with.
  • Click the "Set Active" button on its card. Only one gig can be active at a time.

Step 4: Share with Your Audience

Your main audience page is now live! You can share the URL or use the QR Code button on the audience page itself to make it easy for fans to join in.

Each gig also has its own unique, permanent URL that you can get from the "Share" option on the gig card. This is useful for sharing a link to a future gig without changing your currently active one.

Step 5: Run the Show

During the gig, you can manage everything in real-time from the audience page using the Admin Controls. Switch to the "Admin" view to reorder the queue, advance singers, and toggle features on and off.

Learn more about these powerful tools in the Admin Controls documentation.