Your band's co-worker,
handled in your voice.
It drafts the emails and DMs, builds the setlists, runs the merch and the books, and turns your setlist into a live session file. All in your band's voice, so you stay present online without it eating your week.
Draft in queue
Built to sit alongside the tools your band already runs on
Running the band is a second job nobody applied for.
This is what most weeks actually look like, before any of it reaches the stage.
Instagram rewards the fast
Comments and DMs pile up the second you post, and the reach is weighted toward the first few hours. The sooner you reply, the further the post travels. Except you were about to load out.
Backline takes those off your hands, in your band's voice, and keeps you replying while people are still watching. You stop being the bottleneck for the boring half of being in a band, without going quiet online.
The unglamorous stuff eats the week. Backline gives most of it back.
Being in the band isn't a full-time job. Keeping up with everything around it is. The hours scale with how big your following is and how responsive you actually are, and they land on whichever member replies fastest. Here's roughly what that looks like for a band around 30k that answers people like a person, not a brand.
Estimates, based on what bands actually do, not promises. The more responsive you are, the more of this lands on you, and the more Backline takes off your hands. You still make the calls. It does the typing.
One tool for the parts of the band that aren't the music.
Grouped by the part of your week it takes off your plate. Each one is built and working today, not on a roadmap.
The agent, speaking as you
Comms, in your voiceReads incoming email and writes back a reply for booking questions, gear needs, and press requests. You skim and approve a draft, instead of typing one from scratch between soundcheck and load-out.
Writes replies to comments and DMs so fans hear back while the post is still warm, not three days later.
Not a guess from a sample. You fill out a voice profile once, the tone dials, the words you reach for, the ones you'd never use, and every draft is built from it. See the profile.
Show prep
Setlists and the session filePuts together a running order from your songs, matched to the set length you've got. No more pacing from a blank page the night before.
Spots awkward clashing keys between songs back to back, and warns you when a set runs past the time you've got.
Turns your finished setlist into an Ableton Live file your sound person can just open. Song order, tempo, and markers are all set. They spend the night on sound, not typing it in.
Running the band
The spreadsheets, in one placeA simple ledger for expenses and revenue, with totals by category and a per-show profit and loss. No more guessing whether the tour paid for itself.
Stock across items and variants, low-stock alerts, and row-locked counts so you never sell a shirt you don't have at the merch table.
Track the amps and pedals and who owns them, keep a fan list you can import and export, and hold on to venue and promoter details with a log of every interaction.
See who's free when, and watch ticket sales per show with a read on how fast they're moving. Calendar syncs to Google so nobody double-books.
Ask it anything
A chat that actually does thingsAsk it in plain English: "what's pending?", "approve all the emails", "add a show next Friday", "log last night's set". It reads your live state and acts. It never sends or posts on its own, only queues or writes things down.
Drafts, approvals, and sends show up in a shared feed. No one finds out what "the band" said after the fact.
Daily snapshots of your followers, popularity, and top tracks, with simple trend charts. See what a release actually did.
You don't get a tone. You set it.
Most tools guess how your band writes from a handful of old posts. Backline doesn't guess. You fill out a voice profile once, eight tone dials, your word lists, your audience notes, and your own written do's and don'ts, and every email, DM, and caption is built from it. When it's off, you nudge a dial, add a rule, or swap a word, and the next draft is closer.
- Eight tone dials. How casual, playful, formal, warm, and so on. One number each, the whole personality of the band.
- Your own do's and don'ts. Written rules in plain English: always sign off with a name, never promise an unannounced show. As many as you want, and the drafts follow them.
- The words you reach for. The greetings, sign-offs, and inside jokes you actually use, baked into every draft.
- The words you'd never use. A banned list keeps the cringe and the corporate filler out.
- Who you're talking to. Notes on your audience and context, so a reply to a promoter doesn't read like a reply to a fan.
Edit it any time. The next draft picks up the change.
Eight dials, your word lists, and your own written rules.
Sign off replies with a first name. Reference the person's city if they mentioned it.
Match their energy. Short question, short answer.
Avoid exclamation marks in chains. Never promise a show that isn't announced.
No links in DM replies unless a fan asks where to listen.
Nothing sends itself.
Ever.
Anything going out the door, an email, a DM, a post, a file, waits in a queue until a band member says go. So the band gets its time back without ever sounding like a bot.
Three steps, then it runs in the background.
The agent drafts
Email replies, DM responses, a setlist for the next show. All prepared in your voice and waiting in one queue.
A full month of Pro, free. No card.
Playing local rooms and figuring it out as you go? Get on the list and we'll set you up with every paid feature, the agent and the live session file, for one full billing period. No credit card, no strings.
"Small" just means: local rooms, no label, not sure you're ready to pay yet. If that's you, you qualify. No need to prove it.
Get on the listStart free. Upgrade when the agent earns its keep.
- Setlist builder
- Show and calendar scheduling
- Stage and gear plot PDF
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Agent email and DM drafting -
Live session file for your sound person
- Everything in Planner
- Inbox and Instagram agent, trained on your voice
- Live session file for your sound person
- Full approval queue and history
- Everything in Pro
- Higher usage limits
- Priority support
Running multiple acts or a label? Talk to us
Straight answers
Which features are actually working today?
Most of it. Email is the most complete: connect a shared band Gmail, and Backline pulls in new mail on its own every few minutes and writes back draft replies. Google Calendar syncs your shows. Setlists, the live session file, the stage plot and its PDF, the ledger, merch, gear, fans, contacts, the wiki, Spotify snapshots, and the chat are all built and working.
The one honest gap: Instagram. Backline can draft captions and replies in your voice, but it can't yet read in your comments and DMs by itself, or post to Instagram for you. So for Instagram you add the message by hand, it writes the draft, you send it. The auto-grab and auto-post are still being built.
What can the chat actually do?
It reads your live state across the whole app and acts on it. You can ask it to add or edit shows, songs, and setlists, log how a set went, adjust merch stock, or write a new contact into the book. The one line it won't cross: it never sends, posts, or publishes anything itself, and it can't approve anything high-risk.
What if a draft doesn't sound like us?
Then you fix the profile, not just the draft. Every band fills out a voice profile: eight tone dials (how casual, how playful, how warm, and so on), the words you reach for, the words you'd never use, written do's and don'ts, and notes on who you're talking to. Every email, DM, and caption is built from it. If a draft is off, you nudge a dial, add a rule, or swap a word, and the next one is closer. You edit the draft too, of course, before it goes out.
Do we need to be a certain size to use it?
No. It's built for small, working bands, the kind playing local rooms and running on a shared phone and a group chat. The free tier covers setlists, shows, and your stage plot. The agent and the integrations are paid, but if you're a small local act, we'll give you a full month of everything, no card.
Will it ever post or reply on its own?
No. Anything going out the door, an email, a DM, a post, sits in a queue until a band member taps approve. It's built into the app itself, so there's no back door around it.
Who can see our emails and DMs?
Only the band members you invite, plus the automated system doing the drafting. Your messages are never used to teach the tool how to write for other bands, and you can disconnect any linked account whenever you want.
Do I need Ableton Live to use the live session file?
Your sound person does. The file opens straight in Ableton Live with the song order, tempo, and markers already in place from your setlist. That's the whole point of it.
Can we cancel or downgrade?
Anytime, no contract. Drop to Free and keep your setlists and schedule. You just lose the agent and the live session file until you come back.
Get on stage.
Let Backline handle the admin.
Spots in the beta are limited. Drop your details and we'll let you know when yours opens.