The question that decides whether Choirside works for your choir is usually not about your choir at all. It is whether your singers can use it. Here is the whole list, so you can count how many of yours it rules out before you spend an evening setting anything up.
A phone or tablet
Choirside is a phone app. Your singers need one of:
- An iPhone or iPad running iOS 13 or later.
- An Android phone or tablet running Android 6.0 or later.
That is deliberately a low bar, and it covers almost every device still in use. What it does not cover is a singer with no smartphone at all, or one who uses only a laptop.
There is no browser version. A singer without a phone or tablet cannot use Choirside, and there is no page they can open on a computer instead. For most choirs that is one or two people, and the usual answer is that they carry on getting tracks the way they do now, or practice with someone else. It is worth knowing that before you tell the whole choir this is how practice works from now on.
An email address
Signing in is by email. Your singer types their address, we send a six digit code and a link, and either one signs them in. There are no passwords to forget and no account to create first. If their phone supports passkeys or Sign in with Apple, they can use those instead afterwards.
This means every member needs an email address they can actually open on the phone they are using. In a school or a children’s choir that is the constraint worth checking first.
See signing in for the detail.
To be 13 or older
Choirside accounts are for people aged 13 and up. If your choir includes younger singers, they cannot have their own account today. This affects school and church choirs most, so it is worth counting before you plan around it.
Headphones, ideally
Practising against a backing track works through a phone speaker, but singing along to one does not: the microphone picks up the accompaniment as well as the singer. Anyone who wants to record themselves against the accompaniment needs headphones or earbuds. Any pair will do. See recording your part.
Some data, and then none
Tracks are audio, so the first time a singer plays one it downloads. After that it is kept on the phone and plays again without a connection.
For a rehearsal room with no signal, or a train, they can make sure in advance: open a song and tap Download. That keeps every track for that song on the phone permanently. Nothing removes a download to save space, however many they keep, and Settings › Downloads shows what they are using and removes any of it.
A downloaded song also opens with no connection, not just plays. Choirside remembers the library and the songs it has seen, so a singer can browse, find the piece and start it in a hall with no reception. What they cannot do offline is see changes you have made since their phone last had a signal, and the app says so at the top of the screen rather than pretending otherwise.
One thing worth telling your choir: a song nobody has opened before, and has not been downloaded, will not open offline. “Open it once on the wifi before you come” is still good advice for anything you have added that day.
What it costs them
Nothing, ever. The choir is what gets charged, and only after the beta. Your singers are never asked for a card. See pricing.
What their director can see
Worth being able to answer accurately, because someone will ask and the honest answer is not “nothing”.
When a singer records themselves, that is a practice take. It is kept on their phone under Your takes on the song, and nothing is uploaded unless they press upload, so a take they keep to themselves stays with them. There is no cap on how many they keep.
If they do upload one, other members still never see it, and they can delete it whenever they like. You can hear it, and so can your section leaders. That is the point for most directors, but it is not what a singer assumes, so it is worth saying out loud when you introduce the app rather than letting somebody discover it.
A sectional track, recorded for the rest of a section to learn from, is a separate and deliberate thing, and it stays hidden until you publish it.
The full answer is in recording your part and your data.