The Covid pandemic has accelerated online and hybrid work. This applies not only to office work, but also to collaborative online music making. We used to be stuck with local band members and producers, but today there are countless handy apps and user-friendly websites for making music online together. Almost all sites and apps are free to try out. The free accounts often offer enough possibilities to make music with others, and only start paying when it tastes like more.
In this post we’ve listed the best music collaboration platforms, based on 40 hours of research. The list gives you lot’s of possibilities to connect with musicians and producers all over the world, create unique music together, and share your music with the world!
Music Collaboration Platforms
1. Kompoz
On Kompoz you can upload your ideas for music tracks. You can use your own audio editing software (REAPER, StudioONe, Logic Pro, Pro Tools etc.). It is easy to use and you can collaborate with musicians from all over the world. So don’t be surprised when you get a bass player from Germany, a drummer from Venezuela and a keyboard player from New Zealand. They find you based on your music profile, in which you share your talents, favorite genres and musical influences. If you are successful, you can even sell your music through SoundBlend. The site offers many options, but remains user-friendly.
Quote from a satisfied user:
“When it was all finished, I really had to stand back in amazement at how a song on Kompoz can go from a simple acoustic guitar track to a complete, professionally produced song. I think the overall magic that exists within Kompoz is just that.”
Free Membership
With a free membership you can participate in an unlimited number of other collaborations, but create only up to 3 of your own public collaborations. There are memberships ranging from 5 up to 20 dollars per month, giving acces to more of your own public and private collaborations and more types of sound files to upload.
2. ProCollabs
On ProCollabs you get access to hundreds of songwriters, audio engineers and music producer from around the world. Upload a guitar riff and start a collaborative project with others. You can also join other projects by adding your music to existing songs in the form of an audition.
Selling points:
1. Joint-work approach to collaborating on music projects. Allows members to define and agree on song ownership.
2. Writing, performance, production credits, and copyright shares must be explicitly stated and agreed by collaborators before a project can be completed.
3. Safe and secure members-only environment. Free from the distractions often associated with sites that have uncontrolled community access.
4. Members are screened by human ears and have proven their musical chops to be of a high enough standard to be able to contribute to our exclusive community.
Free membership
With a free membership you get access to music collaboration tools where you can collaborate with others on a unlimited number of projects. You even get 1 GB free diskspace, but you can only work on 2 projects on the same moment in time. You also get access to forums and you can publish your music. Payed memberships range from about 1,5 dollar to 8 dollars a month. They involve possibilities to have more disk space, better audio quality, work on more projects at the same time and the ability to market and sell your music.
3. Soundtrap
Soundtrap has an attractive online studio that lets you record, edit and collaborate with other musicians from any device. All projects are stored in the cloud. The online studio, which is also accessible via the Soundtrap app, offers the following features: auto-tune, automated volume, pan and filters, loops and instruments and the ability to make beats.
Free membership
A free membership gives you unlimited projects, 4750 loops, 430 instruments and sounds, 150k+ sound effects from freesounds.org and a Soundtrap Originals sound pack every second week. Paid memberships run from $8 to $14.
4. Bandlab
Bandlab is a perfect meeting place for musicians. If you register yourself as a guitarist, you can meet millions of singers and other instrumentalists here. You can then produce music together in real-time with their 100% free online DAW. Bandlab has this recording studio available in several formats: as an app (iOS, Android) and as a Desktop Assistant. The softare has over 10,000 professionally recorded royalty-free loops, over 200 free MIDI-compatible virtual instruments and cross-platform customizable guitar/bass/vocal FX & presets. Storage space, number of projects and number of collaborations are unlimited.
Free membership
Bandlab is totally free to use: no subscription fees, paywals or limits to your experience!
Bandlab does not generate any revenue for its parent company. This company, Caldecott Music Group makes money from advertising and from selling hardware and software.
5. Sessionwire
Sessionwire aims to be an all-in-one solution to recreate the feeling of being in the recording studio while physically being apart. You can now record a song on your laptop, work with other musicians remotely as if they were in the same room as you, and then finish the track while chatting with a mix engineer online.
Sessionwire provides ultra-low-latency, bi-directional, studio quality live audio over the internet.
Professional features include video-chat, AAX, AU, and VST send and receive plug-ins, a separate studio-style talkback system, encrypted file transfer, and two-way live audio streaming between macOS or PC recording applications.
6. Blend
Blend supports the most popular DAWs and offers you fast, secure and unlimited backups of your music projects in the cloud via a desktop app. This makes it easy to share files and collaborate with other musicians. You can share your music projects with a self-selected selection of people, or with the whole community. You can also remix other people’s projects and add them to your own productions. It is also possible to share your music with the major music services like Apple Music Spotify and Deezer.
7. Pibox
Pibox gives you one place to review, discuss and share you music. It gives you the opportunity to consolidate files and feedback in one place, and it thereby replaces services like Gmail, Dropbox. Slack, Trello, Exel or Google Docs. You can easily share different versions of a track, comment on a sound file, communicate in a team chat, manage files and add tasks to files. Besides music and audio production the service is used for sharing feedback on for example video designs and podcast productions.
Free membership
A free membership allows you to work on with two users, givers you 1 Gb of storage and you can work on up to 2 projects. Payed memberships range from 10 dollars per month up to 20 dollars a month, giving you more users, more storage space and unlimited projects.
8. Vollume
Vollume enables you to sta connected with all your teams music, metadata and artwork through a cloud-based platform. You can set permissions and share songs and playlists, and give and receive comments on songs. Vollume is a cross-platform service and supports working on a Windows PC, a Mac or a webbrowser and it auto syncs between devices. If that isn’t enough Vollume allows you to drag and drop files from every major DAW.
Free membership
A free memberships gives you 1 hour of uadio uploads and 2 collaborative playlists. For 5 dollars a month you get 200 hours of audio uploads and unlimited collaborative playlist. There are also subscriptions possible for about 2 dollars a month or 10 dollars a month.
9. Soundstorming
Lots of guitarist record a melody of a riff idea on their smart phones using some kind of voice memo app. You can replace this by sharing the foundations of your musical ideas on Soundstorming. Other musicians on Soundstorming can then layer their musical ideas on top of yours, thereby collectively composing a song.
10. Individual Music File Sharing: WeTransfer
A convenient way to collaborate with others online is to add tracks to others’ tracks. If you work with a DAW of your own, you often get large audio files. Through WeTransfer, you can share these files with other musicians for free, anywhere in the world. WeTransfer offers a high download speed and is very user-friendly. Highly recommended!
11. Finding Vocals: Vocalizr
Where other platforms connect you to various categories of musicians, Vocalizr specializes in a single group: vocalists. Share your music with singers who will then audition for you. Find the right voice with the help of a special search engine. For singers, this service offers a chance to showcase their talent and be discovered by major players in the music industry. A real win-win.
12. Finding and making beats: Endless
Endless is an app (iOS, Windows and MacOS) that allows you to easily create beats and jam in real time with beatmakers, DJs and producers. See below for a tutorial for Endless Studio.
13. Finding Audio Professionals: SoundBetter
On SoundBetter ou can hire the best mixing & mastering engineers, singers, songwriters, producers and studio musicians. It uses a system of verified reviews, and protects your copyright which raises the levels of trust in the community. After describing you project you get proposals from top professionals.
14. Finding Samples: Splice
Splice is mainly a royalty-free sample library. It gives you acces to millions of sounds. You can also find 150+ tutorials on music production on Splice (first two videos are for free). Verder kan je er plugins en andere effect software kopen en kan je work on your sounds with other muscians. Pricing runs from about 10 up to 30 dollars per month (depending if you want access to sounds only or also to tutorials and software).
There are some cool tutorials on the Splice website. Max Nepa-Rewak gives us a walkthrough from installation to creation.
Alina Smith from the production team LYRE shows us how to produce a pop track quick and easy
15. Bring your Music to the Market: Melboss
Melboss provides opportunities to increase your connections to the music industry. Melboss helps get your music on playlists and achieve organic and algorithmic growth on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and others. Melboss analyzes social networks, develops marketing strategies and social media management for artists. In addition, Melboss offers opportunities for self-development by pairing you with experienced mentors. They can also help you get a record deal.
16. Bring your Music to the Market: Trackd
Trackd supports upcoming artist with better earnings. Music artist typically earn about 0.004 dollar cents per stream, so they need to generate millions of montly streams to earn a decent income from streaming aline. Trackd wants to change this by giving fans an option to securely and directly pay and support their favourite artists. With Trackd the artists receive 95% of the fans donations directly on their bank accounts.
17. Collaborative music notation platform: Flat
On Flat you can create your own sheet music, but the most powerful feature of Flat is that you can also write sheet music with others. On Flat you can use your midi device to input notes and chords, move scores from and into other software (Guitarists: GuitarPro files can be imported directly into Flat!), easily transpose a score and customize the layout. Flat natively supports to write guitar tabs: bends, harmonics, hammer-ons etc. everything can be written out perfectly.
18. Finding other musicians: Landr
Landr is a platform that gives you access to a large community of musicians. Here you can share ideas and get help and feedback and invite other musicians for a collaborative project. Besides collaboration features Landr offers AI-powered music mastering, distribution, plugins, promotion and sample packs.
19. Finding other musicians: Vampr
On Vampr you can find other musicians to play with. It is a music app and a social network in one. When you create a profile and check some categories, Vampr suggests other musicians who might be interesting for you. Similar to dating apps, you can swipe left or right if you like or dislike something. With a musical match, you can send each other messages, and eventually collaborate (online) musically.
20. Finding other musicians: Social Media
Above all, don’t forget about your own opportunities to use general social media! The major social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, etc. provide numerous opportunities to connect with musicians, producers and others in the music industry. Sharing your own music on social platforms will also give you valuable feedback from listeners and build an initial fan base, however small. Remember that growth can be fast, if you make something that only a few people love fans will be happy to share it.
The Bottom Line
We humans are social animals, we like to collaborate and we learn the most from direct interaction with each other. Online music collaboration platforms are a valuable new source of inspiration, connections and musical creativity. Pick a few platforms that appeal to you, experiment, learn and enjoy. Who knows what people you will meet and what musical adventures you will have!
Thanks for your blog, nice to read. Do not stop.
Thanks! I appreciate your encouragement. greetz, Friso