Bands & sharing

Two ways to work together

There are two, and they answer different questions.

Sharing with one person is for a single chart and a single occasion — you worked out an arrangement, someone wants it. It's a hand-off.

A band is for a group that plays together over time. It's a space that owns charts: everyone opens the same one, an edit is an edit for all of you, and nobody has to remember who has the current version. It's not a hand-off — it's a shelf.

They connect: you add people to a band from your contacts, so the person-to-person half is where every band starts.

Sharing with one person

First, become contacts

You can't look someone up. There is no directory to search, and no way to find an account from an email address — so the first step is deliberate on both sides: one of you generates an invite code like GIG-7F3K-QP29 and passes it to the other however you already talk. They type it in, and you're contacts.

A code is single-use and expires after 24 hours. That's the entire address book: people you both agreed to connect with.

Then send a chart, two ways

Send a copy. They get an offer; if they accept, the chart lands in their library as theirs — their own copy, to edit however they like, with a quiet note recording where it came from. Nothing you do afterwards touches it. If they decline, or never answer, nothing happens.

Share read-only. They see your chart, live, and can open, transpose and print it — but never edit it, and it never enters their library. You can revoke it at any time, and the moment you do it's gone from their side. Good for "here's what we're playing Saturday" when you don't want six divergent copies.

Bands: one shared library

A band is a named space with its own library. Charts in it belong to the band, not to whoever put them there — which is the point, and the difference from sending copies around. One chart, one current version, everyone looking at it.

There are two ways to put a chart in, and the difference matters:

• Move it in — the chart leaves your personal library and becomes the band's. This is the normal one. You still see it, you're just seeing it in the band now.
• Copy it in — the band gets a snapshot and your original stays yours. The two drift apart from that moment on; use it when you want to keep your own version.

Coming back out is always available: any member, of any role, can copy a band chart into their own library at any time. That's deliberate. Joining a band should never feel like handing your work to something you can't get it back out of, and there is no state — not a lapsed subscription, not a frozen band — in which that door closes.

Every band keeps an activity log: who joined, who changed a role, which charts came in and went out, when the bill moved. It names people and charts even after they've left, because a log that says "someone removed something" isn't a log.

Who can do what

Three roles, set per member, for the whole band — not per song. Most bands are one or two admins and everyone else an editor.

A few things can't be done at all, by anyone, because they'd strand the band: you can't remove its last admin, and you can't remove — or walk out on — whoever founded it or whoever is paying for it until that job has been handed to someone else. The app doesn't hide those buttons and then fail; it tells you what to hand over first.

One editor at a time

When you start editing a band chart you take a soft claim on it, and everyone else sees "so-and-so is editing right now" and gets it read-only until you're done. The claim lapses on its own a couple of minutes after you stop, so a closed laptop doesn't lock a song forever, and an admin can take it back by hand if it does.

This is on purpose, and it's the honest trade. GigCharts does not merge two people's simultaneous edits to one chart. Merging chord positions and annotations without either person noticing what changed is a good way to quietly ruin a chart the night before a gig — so instead, one person edits, everyone else reads, and anyone who wants to go their own way copies it out and works on their own.

Who pays

Owning a band is Pro. Belonging to one is free.

Exactly one member — the billing owner — needs Pro, and the band is charged to them. Everyone else can be on a free account, or no paid plan at all, and they are full members: they read, edit by role, export, and take copies out. Nothing about their own free-tier library limits applies to the band's charts, because those charts aren't theirs — they're the band's.

In practice that means one person in the group buys Pro and the band works. It is not a per-seat product and there is no per-member price.

The bill can move. An admin with Pro can take it over themselves, instantly — which is the rescue path if the current payer's plan lapses — or offer it to another admin, which changes nothing until that person accepts. If a band's billing lapses and nobody picks it up, the band goes read-only rather than disappearing, and copy-out keeps working the whole time.

What others can see of you

A display name. That's the whole of it — the name you choose, shown to people you're already connected to. Not your email, not your library, not what you're working on, not whether you're online.

And it only resolves for people you actually share something with: a contact, or someone in a band with you. There's no directory, no member search, no browsing accounts. If you leave a band you can tick a box that says don't add me back, and being re-added needs you to clear it yourself.

Your personal library stays personal. Being in a band gives the band's members access to the band's charts — never to yours.

The numbers

Try it free Bands need an account — sign in with a one-tap email link, no password.