About SongHerd™
SongHerd is a simple way for musicians to organize, find, and perform using their song sheets.
Why SongHerd was developed
I'm a musician, and over the years I accumulated hundreds of Chordpro and PDF song sheets. As my collection grew, finding the song I wanted — and organizing songs for playing — became harder than it needed to be. So I built something for myself.
Sooner than I care to admit, what started as a simple way to keep track of my own music began to grow. The codebase grew with it. Features such as annotating song sheets, importing many PDFs at once, and using an AI handoff to help identify artist information all added to the complexity. That's when I realized the project had become something bigger, and SongHerd was created.
Built for Playing Music
SongHerd isn't intended to feel like a complicated music management system. The idea is much simpler: get your song sheets imported, organized into set(play) lists, find the song you want quickly, and then get the interface out of the way so you can perform.
That's also the idea behind Stagehand™, SongHerd's performance-oriented song sheet view. It keeps the controls small and gives the song sheet as much of the screen as possible — especially when using a tablet on a music stand.
SongHerd Beta
SongHerd is currently in beta — think of it as good, useful, and actively evolving rather than final. A small group of musicians is using it and helping us identify what works well, what doesn't, and what would make it more useful.
Beta access is limited so we can stay closely involved with the people who are actively testing SongHerd. Inactive beta accounts may be deactivated to make room for musicians who want to really kick the tires.
If you're one of our beta testers, thank you. Your questions, suggestions, and even the things that don't work quite right are helping shape SongHerd.
Techie nerd stuff
SongHerd lives in the cloud. Some would call this Software as a Service. We just call it web based. We wanted something that would work across Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, iPadOS, and other modern browser-based devices.
Song sheets (Chordpro & PDFs) are not publicly exposed. SongHerd keeps each user's managed song sheets privately Corraled and checks ownership before serving one up. One user cannot browse another user's managed SongHerd songsheets.
Passwords are not stored as readable text. They are stored using one-way password hashing, which means we cannot simply look up and tell you what your password is.
We built and tested this primarily on a linux desktop and MacOS iPad using a Donner (DBM-50) Page turning device. These work. Other tables and page turners will probably work fine with the exception of the Joyo device which we can not recommend because it's 'flakey'.
What devices does SongHerd run on?
SongHerd™ is web-based and is not limited to Apple devices. It is designed to work through a modern web browser on Android tablets, iPad/iPhone, Windows, macOS, and Linux. No separate Android or MacOS app is required. We like the Donner DBM-50 page turner with SongHerd.
Pricing
SongHerd is currently in beta and pricing for new users after beta is still being explored. We don't much care for the subscription model, so a Pay Once, Use Forever approach is high on the list.
Active beta testers who meaningfully participate during the beta period are intended to receive a free lifetime SongHerd license when the product graduates from beta.
Want to know more?
Our frequently asked questions page is under development and will be made available from SongHerd.com. Stay tuned.
What's up with that Cowboy theme?
Not all Austin, Texas musicians are cowboys. In fact, most aren't. But we love Austin and thought a cowboy theme could work nicely for SongHerd, hence the name. Giddy up!
SongHerd — Round Up Your Song Sheets™.