It feels like just yesterday when we first launched BandLab at the end of 2015. In under six years, BandLab has become the go-to platform for music creators from all over the world. A living, breathing place where creators make and share their music, connect with like-minded people, form bands, collaborate across continents through the cloud and so much more.
Today, BandLab is home to more than 37 million creators, from aspiring songwriters to acclaimed producers with hundreds of thousands of followers. Here’s a quick stat – in May alone, the BandLab community created over 11 million tracks, released more than 9,000 albums, formed 24,000 bands and created more than 50,000 collaboration projects!
Looking back, we’ve grown and learned so much. We’ve constantly released new features, improved existing ones and optimized our Mix Editor for various devices and operating systems. We expanded BandLab to six different languages. We’ve won awards and overtaken our heroes on the charts (we love you, Garageband!). The list goes on. But there’s only so much time to dwell on our past successes. As cliché as it may sound, we’ve never been a team that rests on our laurels.
We must improve. Our users count on us to make BandLab even better. Of course, we strive to build the best possible products for you, but also because we’re fiercely passionate about music. All the work we do goes into making the musical world a better place for you.
We took to our virtual whiteboard (no thanks to the pandemic), and spent months interviewing the people who truly know BandLab best – our community. We meticulously gathered useful and insightful feedback from the BandLab community. These findings became the foundation for the changes we spent months working on. Our designers and engineers translated this feedback into the actual products you’re seeing in front of you today.
Introducing BandLab 10.0
This week, we’re immensely proud to introduce BandLab 10.0 to you – unquestionably our biggest update since our very first release.
The first thing you should notice is – we’ve got a brand new logo and a dynamic, refreshed look! We love it and really hope you do too!
Along with the obvious massive visual overhaul, BandLab 10.0 brings major improvements to both the social and creation experience. On top of general fixed and quality-of-life improvements, here’s an overview of some of the biggest changes and new features:
- Your all-new profile page
- A reworked Replies feature
- Private accounts
- A next-generation update to our Mix Editor
- A brand new Project Page
- A game-changing new instrument – Sampler
- A refreshed and remastered Mastering feature
- Dark mode – coming soon!
Note: The BandLab 10.0 update is being released in stages globally and will be available to everyone within the next few days. Head over to the Play Store to see if it’s available. Update to BandLab 10.0 at the App Store for iOS and Play Store for Android.
New social features
Let’s begin with the new social features! We’ve made major upgrades to help you navigate the world of BandLab, connect with your fans and community and get your music out to the world.
Showcase what matters with your updated BandLab Profile Page
Your profile page is where you make your first impression. For many of our users around the world, this is their musical face to the world. Here’s where your profile picture lives, where other creators and fans can listen to all your music, Albums, playlists and catch up with you and your creative process. What’s changed? By popular demand, we’ve added a counter for the number of plays and a new tab dedicated to all the tracks you’ve released on BandLab.
Navigate more easily with the all-new Project Page
Tree View was a feature we launched in the early days of BandLab. It helped to visualize project history and quickly jump between revisions. It served us well but like all things, there’s always room for improvement. Soaking in the feedback we’ve been getting from our community, we’ve decided to build a new Project Page – from the ground up.
In BandLab 10.0, the new Project Page now lets you access your collaborators and directly invite new members to your project via a shareable Project Link. Not to worry, unlimited cloud storage is still available for all your projects and your entire project Version History is still available to browse, anytime, anywhere. And all of that lives on one single page without switching between confusing modals and views!
Engage with Replies in Comments
When you listen to a dope track and want to show the creator some love, you drop a comment. And if it’s worth talking about, conversations ensue. To make it easier to navigate around a single post’s comments, we’ve updated our replies functionality. Now, whenever you reply to someone’s comment, we create a new thread so it’s easier to carry on with the conversation without being distracted by unrelated comments.
Control your visibility with Private Accounts
We understand that as the BandLab community grows, the interactions between users grow as well. More than ever, it’s important that you are the one in charge of who is able to interact with you.
Previously, all profiles were public. Anyone and everyone were able to see your profile and your public posts. Now, you can make your account private. This means only your followers that you approve can see what you share. With a private account, users who want to follow you will have to send follow requests subject to your approval.
New creation features
The bread and butter of features on BandLab. Creation features are what lets you, the creator, express yourself musically. From a brand new instrument on BandLab to updates to well-loved features, this is something we’re extremely excited about.
A game-changing new creation tool – Sampler
We’re incredibly excited to introduce you to Sampler, our brand new tool for you to create your very own custom instruments. Sampler allows you to truly create without limits, empowering everyone to make music with any sound.
It’s really straightforward – record your own Sampler Kit by recording sounds you hear in the world around you. You can also select samples from over 15,000 royalty-free sounds provided by BandLab, or just import your own. You can go on and make unlimited Sampler Kits to use in any of your projects – and every Sampler Kit you create is available across all your devices – whether you use Android, iOS or make music on BandLab via the browser. Every sample is customizable too, allowing you to infinitely fine-tune the perfect sound for your beats and tracks.
Learn more about Sampler: Introducing Sampler: Make music out of any sound
BandLab Mastering gets remastered!
BandLab Mastering has a brand new look and a great new sound. In addition to a beautiful new interface, we’ve released an update to our Mastering algorithms with help from both musicians and Grammy Award-winning mastering engineers.
We were already speedy to begin with, but with some brilliant engineering magic, we’ve been able to get our proprietary Mastering engine to run directly in the browser, cutting the time it takes from upload to download in half. In comparison to other online mastering services, BandLab Mastering renders tracks 10x faster than anything else out there.
Read more: Master your tracks instantly with the all-new BandLab Mastering
The new Mix Editor
It just wouldn’t be right if everything got a facelift and we left the Mix Editor out. But real talk, it’s much more than just a pretty new look. We’ve made user-centric improvements to the Mix Editor, delivering a simpler interface that helps you focus on making music.
Like our other new features, a big part of these changes are thanks to the people who use BandLab to make music every day. We reached out to our community for feedback and ideas, learning how different creators use the Mix Editor to make music.
Read more: The BandLab Mix Editor: Our DAW rebuilt from the ground up
There you have it – BandLab 10.0! The future of music is exciting and we’re glad you’re a part of it. We couldn’t thank you enough for joining us on this incredible journey. And as we promised when we announced 30 million BandLab users, the work doesn’t stop here. There’s still much to learn, improve and there are greater mountains to climb! Meanwhile, we’ll see you around on the brand new BandLab 10.0!
Oh, and before we forget. Dark mode. Coming very soon… Boom!
