Pick your role. See what changes.

Try it on a real ensemble for 90 days — free.

You sign up, add your members, and run a concert cycle before you spend a dollar. If you subscribe during the trial, your first charge is deferred so you're not paying twice for the same trial period.

Three days before the trial ends, you get a clear email.

It explains exactly what happens next and what your options are. You don't log in one morning and find yourself locked out.

The price on the website is the price you pay.

No hidden tier, no surprise upcharge for community bands vs everyone else. What you see on the pricing page is what gets charged.

Five steps and you're done.

Name your org, pick your plan, set up your ensembles, invite your board, and launch. You don't need your logo or your notification settings on day one — those can wait.

Board members have real accounts before the launch email goes out.

When you invite your membership coordinator or librarian during setup, they get a real account with a seven-day invite link. No placeholder accounts, no manual setup later.

Nothing goes to members until you press Go Live.

While you're still setting up, all member-facing emails are held. The moment you launch, every account you created during setup gets their welcome email. You control when you're "on the air."

Start setup on Wednesday. Come back Thursday. Everything is still there.

Your onboarding progress is saved automatically. Closing the browser doesn't cost you your work.

Your treasurer sees billing and member dues. Nothing else.

Backstage Baton has 14 distinct roles — treasurer, secretary, librarian, membership coordinator, and more. Each role gets exactly what it needs. There's no "just make them an admin" compromise.

Your secretary can read communications but can't edit member records.

Mid-level roles can't accidentally inherit permissions they shouldn't have. The rules are enforced by the system, not by reminding people what they're allowed to do.

You call your librarian the Music Manager. Backstage Baton will too.

Any role name can be renamed for your org. The permissions stay the same underneath — only the label changes.

We're a youth ensemble — phone numbers are private by default.

You set the org-wide default for who can see member email addresses and phone numbers. Options are the full band, section only, or admins only. Individual members can open up from the default but can never go below it.

We track concert attendance but not rehearsal attendance. One setting.

Performance attendance and rehearsal attendance are separate toggles. Turn off the one that doesn't fit your culture. The calculations adjust automatically.

A performance date was wrong. Nobody remembered who changed it. You checked the log.

Every change to a member record, performance, setlist, or rehearsal goes into an audit log. It shows who made the change, when, and what the value was before. The log can't be edited.

Four members have no ensemble. You click the number and land on exactly those members.

The dashboard flags what needs attention. Every count is a link. One click takes you to the filtered list with no extra steps.

When the venue burned down two days before the concert, you cancel in three taps. Members get the email before the news does.

Cancelling a performance sends a red urgent email to every member immediately — if the concert is within 48 hours. The event stays on the calendar marked CANCELLED so nothing disappears. When you restore it, a green "back on as scheduled" email goes out automatically.

Cancelled by mistake? Uncancel.

A cancelled concert stays visible to members marked CANCELLED, so nothing disappears. Hit Uncancel and it's back on the schedule. If members already got the cancellation email, they get a green "back on as scheduled" follow-up automatically.

A member posted their personal calendar link publicly. You told them to reset it. Done in 10 seconds.

Each member has a personal calendar link for their phone's calendar app. They can generate a new one at any time. The old link stops working immediately.

SCFD asked for attendance counts, audience totals, and program counts. The page was open in 10 seconds.

If your org receives SCFD funding, the grant report page pulls all the numbers together — performances, attendance, audience counts broken down by county, and program activity. You don't build this in a spreadsheet.

The weekly digest makes your communication commitment self-fulfilling.

Backstage Baton sends a prompt to your director every Thursday whether they feel like writing or not. Even if they don't reply, the digest still goes out on Sunday with the calendar events already in it. The cadence is structural.

You can hand the gavel to next year's president without a three-hour handoff meeting.

The roles, the audit log, the communication templates, the venue library, and the org settings all travel with the org. Handing over the presidency is a role assignment, not a knowledge transfer.

Regular members can't blast the whole org. That authority stays with your officers.

Members and section leaders are blocked from the email relay by default. Every other role can use it. Section leaders send to their section through a separate, scoped button in their own view.

Automated emails are capped at two per week — and Backstage Baton holds the line even when you forget.

The weekly digest and the morning-of rehearsal reminder are the only automated emails members receive in a normal week. Update notifications for performances and rehearsals are permanently off. That's a design choice, not a default you accidentally left in place.

Board asked "did we send that announcement?" The log said yes — Tuesday, 47 recipients.

Every email sent through Backstage Baton is logged with the sender, the recipient count, and the timestamp. No one can claim ignorance.

Fill in one form. They get a welcome email before you close the tab.

Add a member directly and Backstage Baton creates their record and their login in one step. A password-setup link goes to their email right away. You don't touch a second screen.

Send them a link. They fill in their own details.

Send an invitation and the new member completes their own profile. You get the right contact info instead of whatever you typed from memory.

The number next to Members in the sidebar is your to-do list.

An amber badge shows how many invitations haven't been clicked yet. If it's not zero, someone still hasn't finished signing up.

Invitees fill in their own profile. You give the final OK.

When you send an invite, the recipient clicks the link, fills in their own contact info, instrument, and emergency contact. They land in a Pending Approval list — you check the details and approve before they're fully active.

Upload the file. Smart Import figures out what the columns mean.

Smart Import reads CSV, XLSX, PDF, Word docs, and images. It recognizes every real-world variation of "First Name," "Email Address," and "Instrument" — including the seven column names your spreadsheet invented that don't match anything normal. You review a clean preview before a single record goes in.

It finds the duplicate Marys before you do.

Smart Import catches duplicate entries during the review step and shows you the existing records side by side. Before Backstage Baton, you found out about the duplicate three months later when one of them stopped getting emails.

"Bb Clarinet," "B-flat Clarinet," and "Clarinet" all become the same instrument.

Smart Import matches imported instrument names to the ones already in your org. Same for ensembles. You confirm instead of retype.

One row, two ensembles — handled in one import.

About a quarter of your membership plays in both Concert Band and Jazz. One import row maps to both ensembles. You stop listing the same person twice.

Three bad records? Download those three, fix them, re-upload.

Any records that don't go through download as a clean file. Fix just those rows and resubmit. The other forty are already in.

Forty records committed. Forty welcome emails sent. Zero sent by you.

Every imported record with an email address gets a login created and a 7-day password-setup link sent automatically. You don't set up a single account by hand.

Name, instrument, ensemble, status, emergency contact — all on one page.

The member edit page puts every section of the profile in one place. Fix it, save it, done. No tab-switching.

Set someone as Director and the "missing instrument" alert disappears.

Member type — musician, director, staff, or guest — tells the dashboard who actually needs an instrument assigned. Directors, staff, and guests are excluded from that checklist automatically.

Inactive for a semester. Alumni when they hang it up. Their history stays forever.

Three status choices: active, inactive, alumni. Alumni stay in every past concert record. They stop showing up in every planning view. You don't have to hide them manually.

"When did Beth go inactive?" You can look that up.

Every status change gets recorded automatically with a date and time. The president asked that question at 8pm on a Tuesday. You had the answer in 30 seconds.

Flag dues pending once — the treasurer sees it without you telling them.

One field on the member record is visible to both you and the treasurer. You mark it, they see it. No separate message needed.

A parent or guardian needs the member's emails? One toggle.

Switch on Communication Proxy on a member record and every notification routes to the proxy contact instead — useful for younger members or anyone who prefers a parent or spouse handle band communications. You set it once and forget it.

Tom's invite sat a week. Resend it. He was in by the next day.

One button on a pending member's profile sends a fresh 7-day link. In the old world you would have copy-pasted an email thread and hoped he saw it.

Three people at every season opener forget their password.

Go to their profile, hit Reset Password, and they get a 7-day link in their inbox. Not the one-hour self-service window — seven days, because they need time to actually follow through.

Welcome link expired over December break? Resend it from their profile.

One action sends a fresh link. You don't have to explain what happened or walk them through anything. New link, they log in, done.

Members can update their own bio, photo, and phone. They can't touch anything else.

Members cannot change their own status, ensembles, or role. That boundary holds regardless of what they try. You don't have to audit it.

Every time you log in, the dashboard shows which musicians are missing something.

The dashboard lists only musicians — not directors, staff, or guests — who are missing an instrument or ensemble assignment. Close the gaps and the number goes down. It resets itself every time.

Click "5 members with no ensemble" and the list is already filtered.

Count bubbles on the dashboard take you straight to the right filtered list. You don't set a single filter. You click the number and see exactly those five people.

Once a month, open Member Health and see the whole roster's pulse.

One page shows who's missing onboarding info, who's new, and who's gone quiet. It replaced the end-of-month conversation you used to have with yourself over a spreadsheet.

Active Jazz Ensemble trombones — three clicks.

Filter by status, ensemble, instrument, and section. When you navigate away and come back, the filters reset to defaults. You're never looking at last week's stale view by accident.

Send from Gmail. Eighty-seven people get it.

Type the relay address in your regular email client and send. Backstage Baton delivers to every active member. You never log into anything extra.

Jazz Ensemble venue change? Concert Band never sees it.

Each ensemble has its own relay address. Send to one ensemble when you don't need to reach everyone.

Someone missed rehearsal. Swipe their card and call.

Pull up their card on your phone, swipe, and tap to call or text. You don't copy anything. You don't leave the app.

Four emails go out automatically after someone joins. You write zero of them.

Welcome email right away. Section leader introduction two hours later. A platform orientation two days in. An install nudge on day three. None of it lands in your draft folder.

No section assigned yet? The introduction email is skipped quietly.

Nobody gets an awkward "your section leader is TBD" message. The system checks at send time and skips that step cleanly.

Someone joined and left two days later. The remaining emails never went out.

Before each follow-up sends, the system checks whether the member is still active. If they're gone, the rest of the sequence stops. No emails to a deactivated member.

Pull up your full section roster in one place — no asking the coordinator.

My Section is your page. It shows every player, their photo, their chair, and their attendance history. It's there the moment you log in — nobody has to send you a list.

A player sets her contact info to private. You still see her number.

Your section members can control who else in the band sees their contact info. But you always see it — all of it. You're running the section. You need to be able to reach people.

Tap a name on your phone and call or text without copying anything.

Swipe a member card on mobile and you get phone, text, and email links right there. One tap to open a text thread. Works in the parking lot, works in the green room.

You lead Low Brass and Tuba. My Section shows both, and they both work right.

Backstage Baton handles multi-section leadership correctly. Chair management, attendance, and notifications all cover every section you lead — nothing falls through.

Don't wait for the director to send you a document. Go straight to the Roster.

Your section's chairs live on the performance Roster tab. You can start setting them the moment the concert exists — no handoff, no waiting.

Spring chairs come up pre-filled from the winter concert. Move the one who auditioned for first.

When you open a new concert's roster, Backstage Baton already suggests last concert's chair order for your section. You adjust what changed. That's usually one or two names.

Hit Inherit from Previous. Your whole section's order locks in. Done in ten seconds.

One tap materializes all the carried-over chairs for your section. Subs are skipped. You can't accidentally overwrite another section leader's chairs.

Rearrange chairs from your phone — tap to pick up, tap to place.

On a desktop you drag with the 6-dot handle. On your phone you tap a name to pick them up, then tap where you want them. A banner at the top shows who you're moving. Tap Cancel to put them back.

Not sure your third clarinet is coming? Mark them a sub.

Subs stay on the roster but out of the chair order. When you know, you move them in or pull them out. Your section only — you won't touch anyone else's players.

Everyone needs to bring stand lights Tuesday. Two sentences to your section, nobody else.

Send to Section is a button inside My Section. You write a note, you hit send, and it goes to your players only. Not the whole band — just yours.

For section business, Send to Section is the right tool.

The band-wide relay goes to the whole organization. For section-only news — stand lights, chair changes, who to ask about the score — Send to Section is one click from My Section and reaches only your players.

Open My Section, tap Attendance, mark who's there. Under a minute.

You don't need the director to send you anything. Your section's attendance tab is always there, for every rehearsal and every concert. Open it when people start walking in.

See which players have been spotty — not just tonight, but all season.

Attendance history shows up right on the roster in My Section. You can see patterns across the whole concert cycle, any time you want.

You can see your players' numbers. You can't see your own.

Same rule that applies to every member: your own attendance percentage is hidden from your view. You see your section. You don't see yourself.

A new player joins your section Monday. You have their name and instrument by Monday evening.

Backstage Baton sends you an email the moment someone is added to your section. Name, instrument, section — everything you need to welcome them Tuesday.

A player is removed. You get the email the same day — not at rehearsal.

Same notification, same speed. You find out when it happens, not when the chair is empty.

If a member changes from clarinet to bass clarinet, you get an email before rehearsal.

Instrument changes in your section come to you automatically. No surprises at warm-up.

Someone goes on leave. Someone comes back. You hear both.

Status changes in your section — inactive, moved to alumni, reactivated — all send you an email. You'll know before you have to ask where someone went.

Type the title — the rest fills itself in.

Backstage Baton recognizes most band literature and fills in the composer, grade, duration, and a YouTube recording link before you click Save. You had it in the library in 90 seconds and you didn't retype anything from the publisher's page.

Not in the catalog yet? Check back tomorrow.

For pieces Backstage Baton doesn't recognize, it goes looking overnight. You come back to completed fields, not blank ones.

Your notes and the director's notes stay in separate lanes.

Each piece has a librarian notes field and a director's notes field. Which folder has the transposed parts is yours to track. The director sees their own field. They don't bleed together.

Folder 147 is Sleigh Ride. Now Backstage Baton knows that too.

Folder number and purchase cost are real fields — not workarounds crammed into a notes box. Your filing system is respected, not ignored.

You get the email before the director finishes talking about it.

When a director adds a piece to a performance setlist, Backstage Baton tells you immediately. No surprises at the cabinet Monday morning.

Pending purchase, pending delivery, pending donation — three different situations, handled differently.

Acquisition status tracks exactly what kind of follow-up a piece needs. No more "I think we're getting it somehow?"

The box arrived. You click Received. That's the whole interaction.

One action marks the piece as owned and tells the music director it's here. You stop chasing them down the hall. No separate email to write.

Borrowed stays tagged borrowed — even after it arrives.

The Grainger from Northside Band is marked received, but the Borrowed tag stays put so everyone knows it goes back. Ownership and arrival status are independent.

Checked in, checked out, sitting in someone's case since spring — now it's a filter.

Music status is a real field per piece, not a workaround. Pull up everything overdue in two clicks.

You get the checkout email. For digital pieces, Backstage Baton is quiet.

Checkout notifications fire for physical pieces. For PDFs and digital arrangements, they're suppressed automatically — because what would you even do with that notification?

Coverage checks against who's actually performing — not the whole roster.

If someone plays Trombone in Concert Band and Bass Trombone in Jazz, Backstage Baton uses the right instrument for each ensemble. You see what parts you're actually missing, not a false alarm.

Music Health is the first thing you open on Monday morning.

One page shows what's overdue, what's still on its way, and what has gaps for the next concert. The whole library's health at a glance. No spreadsheet to assemble first.

A 300-piece catalog from 1998 with columns named "COMP" and "GRD". Four hours of data entry — gone.

Smart Import reads CSV, XLSX, PDF, DOCX, and even photos of paper programs. It figures out which column is which, catches duplicates, and flags anything it's unsure about. You review, confirm, done.

Flip the jazz combo to Self-Managed. Your dashboard stops showing their checklist. That's correct behavior.

Some ensembles let members hold their own parts. Backstage Baton knows the difference. Set an ensemble to self-managed and it skips the checkout flow and task list for that group automatically. One setting, nothing else to configure.

Even self-managed ensembles still tell you when a new piece needs sourcing.

When the director adds a pending piece for the jazz combo, you still get the notification. Sourcing the part is still your job even if checkout isn't. Only the task list and checkout flow are skipped.

Open the billing page. Everything is right there.

Active plan, payment method, and next renewal date — in under a minute. No support ticket, no hunting through email receipts.

Six months of receipts, forwarded in one move.

Invoice history lists every charge with the amount, date, and status. Pull them and forward. Done.

Three days' notice before the first real bill.

When your trial ends, you get a warning email three days ahead. When you subscribe during the trial, your first charge waits until the trial is actually over — not the day you signed up.

See the upgrade decision before it becomes urgent.

Usage banners go amber at 80% of your plan limit and red at 100% — visible to your whole team. The next tier price is already on the billing page. You decide whether to upgrade before anything breaks.

The director added a piece mid-rehearsal. You had an email before the end of the night.

When a director marks a new piece as pending purchase, Backstage Baton notifies you directly. The librarian hears about deliveries and donations too — you get only the one that touches the budget.

Filter for dues pending. Your follow-up list is ready in 30 seconds.

The membership coordinator marks dues pending when she processes renewals. You see the flag, you filter on it, you follow up. Backstage Baton doesn't automate collections — it gives you the list and gets out of the way.

You have email and phone for every member who owes dues.

Your role includes access to member contact information. Call the people whose dues are overdue without asking the coordinator to look anything up.

SCFD asks for your impact numbers. You have them open before they finish the question.

The Grant Report pulls your performance history, audience totals, county breakdown, member count, annual budget, founded year, and nonprofit EIN into one page. Available to treasurers, fundraising coordinators, presidents, and VPs.

Citable numbers for the budget narrative — not a spreadsheet you assembled yourself.

Performance volume and attendance figures come from live data. The grant application gets numbers you can defend.

Volunteers tap county at the door. The Grant Report does the rest.

Put the audience counter link on a shared phone at each entrance. Volunteers tap once per person and pick their county — no login, no paper tally. The Grant Report aggregates it exactly the way SCFD asks. Two volunteers tapping at the same moment both count.

You turned off member attendance for the jazz combo. The audience counter still runs.

Head counts for the grant report are independent of your internal attendance settings. A policy decision about member tracking doesn't block your grant data.

Pull contact info from Backstage Baton — not a separate spreadsheet.

The fundraising coordinator role gives you access to member email, phone, and address. When a current member is also a past donor, you find them in one place.

Check whether someone is still active before you make the ask.

Member Health shows each member's current status and engagement signals across the org. Context before the call.

On your phone, swipe a member's card and tap Email. No copying addresses.

The mobile member card reveals phone, text, and email links when you swipe. Your role means the fields are populated for every member — no gap between who you can see and who you need to reach.

When the board asks why you're on this plan, you can show them.

Usage snapshots record where you stood at key moments — member count, ensemble count, what percentage of the plan limit you were using. "We were at 94% of capacity" is a fact you can point at.

One link. One password. Done.

The moment a coordinator adds you, a welcome email arrives. Click the link, set your password, and you have an account. No forms to fill out in person.

Your section leader says hi two hours later.

A short email introduces you to your specific section leader by name — not a generic welcome from "The Band." It goes out automatically, two hours after your account is created.

A short orientation lands two days in.

A few days after you join, you get a quick walk-through email — the calendar feed, the weekly digest, and where to find your profile. Nothing long, just the basics.

On day three, a nudge to put the app on your home screen.

It puts an icon on your home screen — no App Store, no separate download. Tap once from the login page on your phone and it installs.

Every rehearsal and concert lands in your calendar — and stays current.

Subscribe once to your personal calendar link. From then on, your iPhone, Android, or Outlook calendar picks up changes on its own. New dates appear. Cancelled events disappear. You don't have to do anything.

A digest on Sunday. A reminder the morning of.

Those are the only automated emails Backstage Baton sends in a normal week. The weekly digest lands Sunday with what's coming up. The rehearsal reminder lands the morning of, with the venue and call time. Your director or board may also send announcements on top of those — but the system won't add automated noise.

The weekly note sounds like your director wrote it.

Your director and board reply to one Thursday email with what's on their mind. Backstage Baton puts it together and sends a polished note to the whole band Sunday. Rehearsal info, upcoming concerts, and anything leadership wants to flag — all in one read.

Urgent change? You find out right away.

If a venue, date, or time changes on an event that's less than two days away, a red URGENT email goes out immediately. Same if something gets cancelled. If the cancellation gets reversed, you get a follow-up so you don't miss it.

Put names to faces.

The member directory shows photos, instrument, ensemble, and status for everyone in the band. Useful in the first few weeks when you're still learning who's who.

Tap a card on your phone to call, text, or email.

Swipe a member card on mobile and you see their contact options. Tap to call or text directly — no copying numbers out of a PDF roster.

Birthdays and band anniversaries get noticed.

Stored birthdays and join dates show up on the dashboard for leadership and in the weekly digest. Your director shouts you out without you having to remind anyone.

Tonight's info is the first thing you see.

Open the app on rehearsal night and the call time, venue address, and tonight's setlist are right up front. No scrolling to find them.

The setlist tells you more than just the titles.

Once your director publishes the program, you see the dress code, call time, setup time, and any notes about what they want from each piece.

Check your chair before you walk in.

The Stage Layout tab shows your seating assignment. Your spot carries over from the last concert with the same ensemble, so you're not guessing.

Listen to the music on the drive in.

The weekly digest includes a YouTube or streaming link for each piece in the program. Tap and listen.

Set your own sharing for email and phone separately.

You can make your email visible to everyone in the band but keep your phone number visible only to your section. Each one is a separate choice. Admins can always reach you regardless.

Your section leader can always reach you.

Even if you hide your contact info from the rest of the band, your section leader still sees it. That's intentional — they need to be able to reach you about a missed rehearsal.

Route everything to a parent or spouse.

If a parent or guardian should get the emails and texts instead of the member, a Communication Proxy handles that. Every notification goes to the proxy contact. Useful for younger members or anyone who prefers it.

Texts only if you say so.

The first time you turn on any text reminder, a clear disclosure appears explaining what you're signing up for. Your consent is recorded. Reply STOP to any text to turn them off immediately.

Turn off any notification type you don't want.

You control which kinds of reminders you get. Don't want a text the morning of rehearsal? Turn that one off — the email still comes. Each notification type has its own toggle for email, text, and in-app.

See exactly what's been sent to you.

Notification History shows every message Backstage Baton sent you — when it went out, whether it arrived, and how. If you think you missed something, check here first.

Lost your phone? Reset your calendar link.

One click on the Calendar Feed page creates a new personal link and disables the old one. Your calendar apps pick up the new feed on their next refresh.

Play in two bands? One login covers both.

If you're a member of more than one organization on Backstage Baton, you switch between them from one screen without logging out.