iOS and Android
A band's recordings,
in one place.
A shared song library for a band. Every idea, demo and mix lands in one place, in the order it happened, with the band's notes attached to the second they are about.
Free up to 30 minutes of audio, then 15 hours for 9,99 € a month. Adding members is always free.
I play in Köömes, a band in Tallinn, Estonia, and made this for us, musicians. Who made it
Songs happen over time
A song is not a file. It is every attempt on the way to it.
It starts with one person and an idea that will be gone in ten minutes. By the time it is finished, four other people have changed it and there are a dozen recordings of the same three minutes. Every other tool treats those as a dozen unrelated files with names nobody can read. Takebase treats them as one song, in the order they happened.
And none of it happens in one room. The riff arrives at a red light. The chorus arrives at midnight, when the person who most needs to hear it is asleep in another city. So here is one song, over ten days.
- Tuesday, at a red light. A guitar line turns up out of nowhere and will not survive the drive home. Phone out, recorded into Takebase on the spot. Forty seconds, hummed over the engine. That is take one of a song that did not exist this morning.
- Tuesday, later. Two lines of a verse arrive in a queue at the shop. They go in the song's notes, under the take, where the band will find them instead of being told about them.
- Wednesday, at home. The line gets worked out properly on the guitar, with the right chords under it. Take two. Take one is still underneath it and always will be.
- Nobody had to send anything. The song was in the band's album the moment it was recorded. The drummer heard it on the way to work and the bass player has been playing along to it all week.
- Friday, rehearsal. They play it together for the first time, and half of the second verse changes in the first hour. The room recording goes on as take three.
- Saturday, ten past midnight. The singer overdubs a chorus onto Friday's take, over the band rather than instead of it, and goes to bed. The band wakes up to it. Two comments land at 1:58, where the chorus comes in.
- Next rehearsal. Everybody has already heard the chorus, so nobody has to be taught it. It sits in the pocket on the second run and they book the studio.
A month later the studio mixdowns go on top of the same song, and the red light is still take one, one tap away. Nothing was overwritten and nothing had to be renamed, so you can play a finished song backwards through its own history and hear where it came from.
The three words
Album, song, take. There is no fourth level.
Three words, and everything else hangs off one of them. No folders, no projects, no sessions, and nothing to file.
Album
People are invited to an album, never to a library. The running order is yours to drag.
Songs in it
Hard Left on 664 takes
Rusty Gate3 takes
Long Way Down1 take
Untitled 41 take
A song is the tune, not a recording of it. It holds every attempt at itself.
Inside Rusty Gate
Takes
v3rehearsal
v2at home
v1in the car
Notes
Two verses, a chorus nobody has words for yet, and the key it ended up in.
Comments, on a take
0:41 that note fights the chord
1:58 french horn here?
Takes, notes and comments all hang off the song. A take keeps its own comments, so old notes stay with the version they were about.
That is the whole model. Nothing else to learn, and nothing hiding a folder inside a folder.
In practice
How my band works now.
I play in Köömes. Before Takebase, an idea meant a voice memo mailed to everyone, and after that it was on each of us to keep hold of it. Nothing about that was organised, and none of it was anybody's fault.
What an idea used to go through
- Somebody records an idea into Voice Memos and emails it to the whole band.
- Everybody listens. Some of us save the file into a folder that only ever grows.
- Somebody puts a few of them in Dropbox, for later.
- Notes come back as more email, with the timecodes typed out by hand.
- Months on, somebody half remembers an old mail or a file on Drive, and the hunt starts.
What it goes through now
- One of us records the idea. We name it together, usually something daft from that evening that everybody then remembers.
- It goes into the album we keep for ideas, as a song.
- By the next rehearsal a few people have listened and turned up with something of their own for it.
- We play it, record it, and that recording goes on as the song's newest take.
- The notes stay on the audio, at the second they are about. The compression, the note that fights the chord, the French horn somebody wants at the culmination.
- The loop repeats until we are in the studio, and the studio mixdowns go up as takes too, until we master it and put it out.
A finished song still has the first rough phone recording at the bottom of its stack.
That is the part I did not expect. You can play a song forwards through its own history and hear where one guitar riff caught somebody else, what they put on top of it, and how the whole thing ended up somewhere the first version never suggested. It is also an honest record of how much work goes into three minutes of music.
We do still manage to add the same song twice. Somebody spots it in the comments and we sort it out, and that is about the worst thing that happens now. Nobody mails the band a list of timecodes any more.
Takebase is early, and we are still the ones testing it. We use it every week, every rehearsal turns up something else it should do, and there is a decent list of that ahead of us.
The loop
What using it actually looks like.
01
Get it in
Record it in Takebase, to a metronome if you want one. Or use Voice Memos and the share sheet, if that is already your habit.
02
It lands on the song
Pick the song it belongs to, or start a new one. It becomes that song's newest take.
03
Comment at 1:23
Tap the waveform where the problem is. The band reads your note at the second it happens, not in an email.
Inside the app
Every part of it, one screen at a time.
Seven screens of a real album, in the order a song meets them. Swipe, drag, or use the arrows.
What an album is for
A room, and a running order.
Plan the record while it is still demos.
Songs in an album can be dragged into whatever order you like, so an album is not only where the takes live. It is the running order, and you can argue about it while every song in it is still a phone recording.
The order is the band's: drag it once and everybody sees it that way. Keep one album for ideas and another for the record you are actually making.
It works when it is just you.
One album per band or per project, and you can be in as many as you like. My own ideas are in one, Köömes is in another, and something with two other people is in a third.
Same app and same loop either way, and nobody ever sees an album they were not invited to.
Everything it does
A rehearsal tool, not a place to file things.
You pay for the audio you store, and never for a person. Nothing on this list is behind the subscription, so a band of four can use every one of these on the free plan and one of you pays only when the uploads get past the allowance.
Record straight in
The app has its own recorder. No second app, no share sheet, and the take lands on the song you started from.
Or share a memo in
The iOS share sheet, the Android share menu, or the file picker. m4a, mp3, wav and aiff.
Overdub your partiPhone first
Record over a take, hear both together before you decide anything, then keep it as the newest take or bin it and go straight round again.
A click that followsiPhone first
Not a BPM you type. Every beat is found in the recording itself, so a take that drifts is followed rather than fought. Halve it, double it, nudge it.
Loop the eight bars
Drag the part nobody can play yet and play it round until they can.
Comment at 1:23
Tap the waveform where the problem is. Bold, headings, lists and links, a full-screen editor, and an hour to fix a typo.
The words, on the song
One sheet of Notes the whole band edits, read on the player while the take is playing.
Every take kept
A new take goes on top of the last one and nothing is ever replaced. Switch between them mid-listen.
Start a take with the side buttoniPhone first
Point the Action Button at Takebase and press it with the phone still in your pocket. The count-in is running by the time you are looking at the screen.
Ask Siri, or the cariPhone first
Say a track's name with the phone locked and it plays. CarPlay, and the band's recordings in the phone's own search.
Invite by link or QR
A link or a QR code puts somebody in the album, able to listen, comment and add takes like anybody else. Good for 24 hours.
Artwork and colours
The library is a grid of covers, and a colour you put on a track is the band's, not just yours.
Your takes, under your control
Nothing is public unless you send it to somebody. Audio lives in the European Union, there is no feed, no profiles, and none of it is training data.
Private by default
Delete it and it is gone. That is a promise, not a setting.
Unreleased music is the entire content of this app, so here is exactly what happens to it.
Getting a file in
The iOS share sheet, the Android share menu, or the file picker inside the app. Whichever door it comes through, Takebase asks one question: which song does this belong to?
Takes in
m4a, mp3, wav, aiff. Not flac and not ogg, and the app says which by name rather than failing at you.
What your phone does with it
One decode pass on the device: an AAC file at 192 kbps, at your file's own sample rate, and the waveform drawn from the same pass. An m4a is uploaded untouched.
So what this is
Reference audio for a band to work from, not an archive. Your master never leaves your machine, and it shouldn't - only the converted copy is uploaded.
Getting a file back out
Not yet. Download is built and deliberately switched off while the app is new.
Where the audio lives
Cloudflare R2, in the European Union.
Where everything else lives
Google Firestore in Finland: albums, songs, takes, comments, memberships. Backups are kept for a week and then expire.
Playing it
A signed address that stops working after an hour. Nothing in the bucket is public and no web page anywhere plays your audio.
Invites
A link is an invitation to an album and it stops working 24 hours after it is made. Remove a member and their access ends immediately.
What is public
Nothing. No feed, no discovery, no profiles to browse, no way to find a band that did not invite you.
AI
None of it, ever. Your recordings are not training data and never will be, and the only thing that ever decodes your audio is your own phone.
Deleting
Gone from the app for everyone the second you confirm, the minutes back on your allowance the same second, no undo for anybody, and the file itself erased from storage within 48 hours.
Over your allowance
Uploads stop, and playback stops with them, until you delete something or subscribe. Nothing is ever deleted for you.
Abandoned free accounts
Warned by email after 150 days of silence, emptied at 180. Free accounts only, it is in the Terms, and opening the app resets the clock.
Runs on
iPhone and Android. No desktop app and no browser version.
Looks like
Dark, always. It is for a rehearsal room at one in the morning.
Bent Rushmore · Tallinn
Who made it
I made it for my own band first.
Everything on this page got settled by four people arguing about a take, not by a roadmap.
I write and release records out of Tallinn. I spend the rest of my time around apps, which is the only reason this ended up a product instead of a complaint.
Köömes is where all of this came from, and the section above is our actual week. What made it a product rather than a complaint is what it cost to fix: the version history and the sharing controls we reached for every week sat behind a tier priced for a studio, not for four people passing voice memos around.
Takebase started as that week and kept going. Musicians have been testing it since the first build that ran on a phone, and what they asked for is on this page: recording straight in, loops, notes on the song, comments pinned to the second. It is a full collaboration tool for a band now. The things nobody reached for got cut along the way: sessions, folders, a tab bar, an A/B compare.
Pricing
Thirty minutes free, then fifteen hours.
The meter counts minutes of stored audio rather than gigabytes. 30 minutes is about ten three-minute takes, which is enough to put a few real rehearsals through the app before anybody pays; 15 hours is about three hundred. It counts the albums you own, so an album somebody shares with you costs you nothing, and the takes your bandmates add to your album are charged to you. A band where one person does the uploading needs one Pro between them.
Free
0 €
30 minutes of stored audio, per account
- Every feature in the app
- Unlimited members
- Share links with permissions
- Timestamped comments
Takebase ProSave 42% yearly
9,99 €
/ month
69,99 €
/ year
or 69,99 € a year
5,83 € a month, billed once a year
15 hours of stored audio, thirty times the free allowance.
- Everything in Free
- 15 hours instead of 30 minutes
- Members still free
- Cancel any time
Pro starts with a free month at the moment, and the App Store confirms you are eligible before it charges anything. Billed through the App Store or Google Play, at whatever your own storefront charges, and Takebase never sees a card number.
Questions
The ten things people ask before they install it.
What is Takebase?
A shared song library for a band, on iPhone and Android. Every recording of a song stacks on that song in the order it happened, the band's comments are pinned to the second they are about, and nothing is ever replaced or made public.
How does a recording get into it?
Four doors. Record it straight into Takebase, to a metronome if you want one. Or share it in from Voice Memos, from the Android share menu, or out of the file picker, if a recorder you already know is the one you would rather use. Whichever way it arrives, Takebase asks one question: which song does this belong to? It becomes that song's newest take. It takes m4a, mp3, wav and aiff.
Can the band comment on one moment of a take?
That is the thing it is built around. Tap the waveform where the problem is and the note is pinned to that second, so the band reads the snare is late at the snare rather than in an email three days later.
Is Takebase an alternative to Samply?
It goes further than sending a take out for comments, and it charges on a different basis.
Takebase carries the rehearsal, not just the review of it: record straight into the app, loop the eight bars nobody can play yet, overdub your part over a take and keep it as the next one, get a click that follows a drifting recording instead of a BPM you typed, and keep the song's words on the song. All of it, in one list.
Then the money, which is the sharper difference. You pay for what you store, and never per person. Nothing here is behind the plan: there is no feature a subscription unlocks, so everybody who listens, comments, writes the words and switches takes is free for ever, with the whole app. Only the account whose uploads fill its allowance ever needs Pro. A band where one person does the uploading needs one subscription between four people, not four.
What does it cost?
Free up to 30 minutes of stored audio, with every feature in the app and as many members as the band has. Takebase Pro is 9,99 € a month or 69,99 € a year for 15 hours, billed through the App Store or Google Play. Adding members is always free. The two plans, side by side.
Do all four of us have to pay?
No, and it is not a trial: one of you might, and the other three are free for ever with every feature. The allowance is stored audio on your own account, so an album somebody shares with you costs you nothing and spends their minutes, not yours. Listening, commenting, writing the Notes and adding a take to somebody else's album never fill an allowance you have. In most bands one person does the uploading, and that is the one subscription.
Which phones does it run on?
iPhone on iOS 15 and later, and Android. The library, the recorder, the takes, the comments and the Notes are on both. The studio tools are on iPhone first: overdub, the click track, the loop, the Action Button and the Siri and CarPlay work are iOS today, and where a feature is missing the control is simply absent rather than dangled at you. There is no desktop app and no browser version of the app itself, deliberately: it is for a rehearsal room, not a desk. A share link does open in any browser.
Can somebody outside the band listen?
Two kinds of link do that. An invite link puts somebody in the album, where they listen, comment and add takes like anybody else. A share link is a web page for one take, and it needs no app and no account. Both stop working a day after they are made, and the audio behind them plays from a signed address that dies within the hour.
Is unreleased music actually private here?
There is nothing public to be found: no feed, no discovery, no profiles, and no way to reach a band that did not invite you. Audio sits in Cloudflare R2 in the European Union and everything else in Google Firestore in Finland. Your recordings are not training data and never will be, and the only thing that ever decodes your audio is your own phone. The whole of it, in plain words.
How do I delete a take, or everything?
Delete a take and it is gone from the app for everyone the second you confirm, the minutes are back on your allowance the same second, and the file is erased from storage within 48 hours. There is no undo, for anybody. An account and everything in it goes the same way, from inside the app or by email: how to delete your account.
