How to Organise Your Song Library as a Musician

Most working musicians have their repertoire spread across three or four places: notes on their phone, chord charts in a folder, a spreadsheet somewhere, PDFs that may or may not be current. A single, well-organised song library changes everything.

Why Your Repertoire Needs a Central Home

When a new client asks "can you play this at our event?", you should be able to check in about 10 seconds. When you're building a setlist for a new venue, you should be able to browse your whole repertoire by key, tempo, or feel. When a band member needs the chord chart for a song, they should find it without asking you.

None of that is possible when your library is scattered. Centralising it is one of those admin jobs that feels annoying to set up and saves hours every year afterwards.

What to Record for Each Song

At minimum: title, artist, key you play it in, and tempo (BPM if you have it). Beyond that, useful information includes the feel or genre, notes on any special requirements (tempo changes, key modulations, intro structure), and the chord chart or lyrics if you use them on stage.

Building Your Library in Dashplan

Dashplan's Setlist Manager includes a personal song library where you can add every song in your repertoire with title, artist, key, BPM, and full ChordPro lyrics. You can import lyrics directly into the app — no typing out lyrics from scratch. Once your library is built, adding songs to a new setlist takes seconds: search, drag, done.