Are you trying to decide which app to use to run a click and tracks for your worship
ministry?
On this video, I'm going to give you a side by side comparison with Prime by Loop Community
and Playback by Multitracks.com.
I'm gonna walk you through the pros and cons of each of these really powerful and easy
to use iOS apps and hopefully by the end of this video, you'll have a much clearer understanding
of which one is the best fit for your worship ministry coming up.
This video's brought to you by Worship Leader School, where you're gonna find all the essential
training, advice and support you need to plan and lead worship.
Click the link in the description to learn more.
If we haven't met yet, my name's Jake Gosselin.
I'm the creator of Churchfront.com, helping you lead gospel centered and tech savvy worship.
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The two most popular apps that are being used by worship bands to run a click and tracks
in worship are Prime by Loop Community and Playback by Multitracks.com.
Of course, when I refer to app, I'm talking about apps that run on mobile devices and
iOS devices specifically, like an iPad or an iPhone.
I personally use Ableton Live to run a click, tracks and automate lighting and lyrics in
our worship gatherings at the church plant where I lead, but Prime and Playback, while
they might not have the power and capability of Ableton Live, they sure can accomplish
a whole lot for your worship band.
It can be hard to know which of these two apps is the best choice for your ministry.
So on the rest of this video, I'm gonna walk you through all the criteria that you need
to be thinking about and all the pros and cons of these two apps that help you really
understand which one is best for your context.
I believe that both of these apps are super powerful, super user friendly and a great
fit for a lot of worship ministries.
It really comes down to your own personal preferences when it comes to the user design
as well as which ecosystem do you want to be in.
Before I dive in, let me know below in the comments which one of these two apps are you
using at your church or have you been dabbling in, and let me know why you chose one over
the other.
Let's go ahead and dive into this comparison.
First, let's talk about price.
So, the Prime app is free.
It's really hard to beat free, right?
All you have to do is go to the app store, press the download button and, bam, you have
that free app either on your iPad, iPhone or even Mac laptop.
Playback, on the other hand, starts out as free but in order to unlock all the features
that Prime has, which is already free, you have to pay at least a five or six dollar
a month subscription for Prime.
With the free version of Playback, you get a lot of the essential functions that you
need, like being able to build the set list of songs, being able to mix your songs, have
some transitions.
All that really basic stuff, but you have to pay in order to be able to have the midi
mapping feature, to be able to loop song sections, to have a dynamic guide queue, and to be able
to route audio to different buses for an external audio device.
All of those things, Prime does for free.
Since for this video I want to compare these two apps at their best, I went ahead and subscribed
to the six dollar a month premium version of Playback.
While it's kind of a pain you have to pay for Playback versus it's free for Prime, in
the end, what you get in Playback, I think it's worth six dollars a month.
Prime could be charging the same or more for their app as well.
It's totally up to those two companies, what they want to charge for it, but six dollars
a month, it's like the price of a latte once a month.
It's not very much.
Next, let's talk about the platforms these apps are available on.
Both apps run on iOS devices like an iPad or an iPhone, but Prime can also run on Mac
OS which can be really great if you rather build your sets and work on a full laptop,
a Mac laptop rather than doing everything on an iPad or iPhone.
Playback, on the other hand, does not have a Mac OS version of its app.
Next, let's talk about the user experience of each of these apps.
This criteria, I believe, is completely up to personal preference, but I'll show you
what they look like side by side.
So, here we have the Prime app and I'm a big fan of this layout.
On the left side of the screen, you see all of our tracks.
I don't have to scroll around to see the different tracks and on the right side I see my set
list of songs.
Then when I have a song selected, I see the whole song on the top portion of the app from
beginning to end, and I can even zoom in to see if it's just the song sections.
A little bit closer up I like being able to just see where the play head is over the course
of the whole song.
Then on the bottom right you have your controls like play, stop, fade out, go to next song.
You can easily transpose a song or change the tempo as well.
Now we're looking at the Playback app.
The user interface is a little different.
Starting at the top, that's where you have your transport controls, a play, fade out,
the back button.
I like having those controls at the top.
It's my own personal preference.
I feel like it's common in digital audio workstations.
Then below that you have your set lists of songs laid out horizontally.
You could see what your transitions are in between each song and then below that, whatever
song you have selected, you'll see the audio file of the song laid out horizontally in
a timeline.
You'll also see a grid that denotes the different bars and beats within a song.
Then underneath that, you have your mixer for your tracks, and then on the bottom right
you have some buttons for looping and also to control your master volume.
When comparing this user interface to Prime, the thing I don't like about Playback is I
don't like having to scroll through the song timeline like this.
I like how in Prime you can view the whole timeline at once, and then I also am not a
huge fan of having to scroll through my different tracks to see them.
So, that's the thing.
I think in Prime it's easier to quickly get to where you need to go to control things,
but when it comes to this user interface, it really depends on your personal preference.
Now let's talk about the most common task that you're gonna be trying to accomplish
within these apps.
So, the first portion is building out your set list of songs.
In both apps, it only takes seconds to find a song within your loop community count or
Multitracks.com account, and load them into the playlist.
In both apps, it's really easy to import songs.
It only takes a few seconds to import your tracks from your Loop Community account or
your Multitracks.com account.
It's also equally just as easy in each of the apps to edit your set list.
You can edit the order of songs, so you can do it that way in the Prime app, or if you're
in the Playback app, you just hit the edit button here and then you can start clicking
and dragging your songs around into different orders.
In both apps you can also add songs in that contain just a click track.
Maybe you didn't want to buy multitracks for a particular song, or you can have a click
in pads, and I love doing that.
I love having click in pads in between certain songs in my set list.
That kind of allows me to engage the congregation and just still keep that ambient atmosphere
feel supporting us and supporting the band.
It's also really easy to edit song arrangements in both of these apps, so you can easily add
song sections.
You can delete song sections.
That's what it looks like in the Playback app and then in the Prime app, same thing.
So, go to edit song, edit arrangement, and then here I can just hold down the different
sections.
I can drag them around.
When I double click on a section, I can delete that section or I can add a new section right
after it.
Both apps, editing arrangements, basically the same functionality.
Now let's talk about the transitions feature.
This is a very important features, and both of these apps have come a long way in adding
this functionality so that you can have some nice, smooth transitions between songs.
So, in both apps, you could have it so it'll automatically go to the next song once you've
done a song or you can also cross fade songs so it'll fade out song A and it'll fade in
song B and kind of cross fade that and make it sound nice and smooth, or you can just
overlap the end of song A with the beginning of song B, and it's not gonna fade out either
of these parts but it's just gonna simply overlap them and that also sounds really smooth
in a lot of cases.
One thing that the Prime app does that the Playback app doesn't do is this feature where
it'll just keep playing the click track once you've done a song.
So, if you have it on that little icon right there, what's gonna happen if I go to the
end of this song?
Three, four ...
It's not gonna go to the next song.
It's just gonna keep that click going at 110 beats per minute, so you can see the play
head gets to the end of the song and just keeps going.
I think this is a really handy feature especially if you just wanted to kind of vamp, have some
spontaneous moments.
It's really powerful to have that.
Let's talk a little bit more about the click tracks for each of the apps.
So, in Prime you can go to the gear icon on top right and you can select your click sound.
I really like the digital sound.
Not a big fan of the default sound, and then you can add in subdivisions, so I like having
eighth notes in there to subdivide the beat.
It really helps our band stay on time and I wish these click settings were global, like
that it would apply to all songs, but I realize as I started changing the settings, I had
to go through and change it for each song, which is kind of a pain.
But in the Playback app underneath the click sounds section, whenever you select a different
sound, that will actually apply to all the songs.
It's a global setting within the app.
One key difference between these two apps is how quickly you can change the key of a
song and the tempo of a song within the app.
So, in the Prime app it's actually really quick and easy to do.
I can even be playing a song ...
[crosstalk 00:09:35] Two, three, four ...
... and I can alter the tempo down here, or I can change the key as well, whereas in the
Playback app, if I go to the settings of the song and I go to key, I'll select a new key.
Then I have to press "update."
It has to download new files for that song, and it takes a few minutes to do that.
So, if you ever plan on having to change the key on a fly during band rehearsal and you're
using Playback, just make sure you know it's gonna take a minute or two or three for it
to do this.
The Playback app, what I think is happening is it's actually downloading new audio stems
into the app and switching them out with the old one.
That's what I guess is happening in this process, and maybe there are some advantages to the
way they do this in Playback by actually replacing the audio files.
Maybe there's not as much warping going on so you'll have a better, cleaner sound with
the transposed files.
The next feature I want to compare with these two apps is the control that you have while
you're playing through the songs during worship.
Again, these apps are very similar when it comes to this feature set.
I'm gonna go ahead and play this song here in Prime and a couple cool things you can
do, you can hit the loop button.
Hit it the first time.
It's just gonna loop once and then go through the end, but if you hit it again, it will
just keep looping it infinitely.
I'm gonna go ahead and turn that off, I don't need it to loop right now.
Then another cool feature is that you can easily skip to different song sections, so
I'll just click on the chorus.
It's gonna jump to the chorus and it also has a dynamic guide that's gonna tell me which
section is coming up next.
Then finally I can easily fade out the tracks or I can fade them back in.
Playback's control is very similar, so I'll just select a song here.
I'll go ahead and play "Look to the Son."
If I want to jump to different song sections, I just double tap it and it's gonna be blinking.
It's saying it's queuing up that section.
It's gonna wait til it finishes the previous song section and it gives the dynamic guide
queue as well, just like the Prime app.
You can also fade out your backing tracks or fade them back in a fly, and then Playback
also has the looping functionality as well, so I can have the loop once button triggered
here and that's all it's gonna do is loop back to this section and then it will just
keep playing through the end of it, or I can turn on the infinite loop button and it'll
just keep looping that section until I disable that.
So, when it comes to controlling your tracks, jumping around, looping sections, these apps
function basically the same.
Now let's talk about some more advanced features.
When you're getting started with running a click in tracks, the most basic setup is to
put your click in guide on audio output one or the left side of the stereo output and
then put your backing tracks on audio output two or the right side of your stereo output,
but when you want to get fancy, you want to have more control over your mix at your front
of house console, you could start using multiple outputs, using like an audio interface, like
the iConnectivity audio interface are great for both of these apps.
Both apps have that same functionality where you can go in and set up the buses and what
tracks are going to which outputs.
Then the other more advanced feature that both apps has is midi functionality, so you
can trigger your songs.
You can loop songs.
All the different control features you have in here, they could be triggered by an external
MIDI device.
Let's say for example you're using like a foot switch, like the Looptimus foot pedal
or other MIDI foot controllers.
You can easily map MIDI notes to the different songs and to the different controls so you
can just control everything with your feet.
Finally I want to talk about the ecosystem for each of the apps.
This is one of the big factors that you're gonna have to side on.
Which one makes the most sense for you.
Both Multitracks.com and LoopCommunity.com, their main business is distributing and selling
the master tracks and backing tracks that we use in our worship bands, and what they've
done in building both of these apps is not only have they made it easy to play the backing
tracks you buy from them, but they also put some financial incentive in there that's gonna
make it more affordable for your worship band to build up a library of songs.
First, let's look at Multitracks.com and the ecosystem they offer.
One of the latest things that they've come up with, and it's pretty exciting for churches
that you don't have any backing tracks but you'd like to make the switch in the short
term but you also don't want to drop thousands of dollars on full backing track stems for
your worship ministry.
Multitracks has a rental program where you can rent up to 15, 20, 25 songs per month
for a relatively low monthly fee.
So let's say you have four worship services a month at your church and you do four songs
a month.
Well, with their 16 song a month plan it only costs you 60 bucks to have full backing track
stems for all those songs.
Now, the downside is that you have to use the Playback app.
You don't actually get to download the audio files onto your own computer and use them
in software like Ableton.
So that's the one big con about the rental program, but if you're just using this app,
then the rental program could work great for you.
I just want to help you think through some of these numbers.
Let's say at my church we would need at least 20 songs a month that we could rent, so that's
$75 a month, so 75 times 12, that's $900 per year to have 20 unique songs every month.
If I were to buy the master tracks for 25 songs at $39 apiece, 25 times 39, that's 975
dollars just for one month worth of songs, and of course, though, in a church setting,
we're often repeating the same songs over and over, so are we spending $975 a month
at my church right now to buy master tracks?
No.
We probably end up buying $1,000 worth a year in backing tracks, but that's because I've
been building up a library over the years, so we're not always having to buy new ones
for every song we do, every single week, but it I were just getting started and I wanted
to have backing tracks for all my songs and I knew I was just gonna use the Playback app,
then that rental program sure is really attractive, and it's gonna save you a ton of money.
Now let's talk about the Prime ecosystem.
So, when you go to LoopCommunity.com's website, you can purchase all the master tracks and
premium tracks and community tracks that they have available there, and Loop Community has
most of the master tracks for most of the songs that we use on a Sunday.
Unfortunately they don't have all the master tracks and the big one is that they don't
have the master tracks from Hillsong, like the original audio stems from the labels.
Multitracks.com apparently has exclusive rights to distribute those, but LoopCommunity.com
creates premium tracks, which they have their own professional studio musicians create those
tracks and honestly they sound identical.
Like, you can tell there's maybe a little bit of difference, but I use a lot of Loop
Community's premium tracks and the great thing about that is it's often at quite a reduced
price when you compare them to the master tracks from Multitracks.com.
Loop Community also has their community tracks which are even cheaper, which usually run
about $20 apiece.
Then Prime has also built in financial incentive for you to use the Prime app and buy your
tracks that way.
Whether you're buying the master tracks, premium tracks or the community tracks, it's usually
about $5 cheaper for you to buy the Prime version of those tracks.
The downside is you don't actually get the audio files themself.
Like if you want to start using them in Ableton, you have to buy the full multitrack stems
from their website to have that ownership of them.
Loop Community's tracks are generally less expensive than Multitracks.com's full multitrack
stems, but then Multitracks.com has that rental program which can be really attractive for
a lot of churches.
In the end, I think it comes down to what is your personal preference when it comes
to user experience?
Do you like the layout of the Prime app or do you like the layout of the playback app?
Then the second big factor is what's your overall plan when it comes to building your
backing track library?
Do you want to be in the ecosystem that Multitracks has where you can just rent songs every month
but then you never own the stems yourself or do you want to be in the Prime ecosystem
where you can, again, save money by buying the Prime tracks but not be able to use those
audio files for anything else or even just buy the full audio stems through Loop Community
and still have access to them through the Prime app?
So, the choice is yours, but I hope this side by side comparison just helps you figure out
which one is best for your worship ministry.
If you're using one of these apps or trying one of them out, let me know below in the
comments which one you picked and why, and finally I want to invite you to check out
Worship Leader School, where you're gonna find all the essential training, advice and
support you need to plan and lead worship.
Click the link in the description or visit WorshipLeaderSchool.com.
Thanks so much for watching this video.
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