Spotify’s Soundtrap app for musicians introduces live collaboration and auto save

Spotify’s digital audio workstation (DAW) platform Soundtrap is introducing new features for musicians, including live collaboration, auto save and comments. The firm said the first two features are under an opt-in beta so artists will have to manually enable these features.

The company is rolling out the comments feature to all users starting today. This will allow people working on a project to leave notes on different parts of the track for remote collaborates. It’s a bit like the Google Docs comments feature for editors.

Image Credits: Spotify

Soundtrap is also introducing two new test features: live collaboration and auto save. The company noted with a live collaboration function, musicians can work on a project from any device in real time. The collaborators will have to enable this feature before creating a new project for a music track or a podcast. What’s more, the auto-save options will remove the need for artists working on the project to manually save these changes.

While these features will launch under a public beta today, the company said it plans to launch a stable version later this year. Soundtrap has to manage lags and latency for the real-time collaboration feature so musicians don’t feel out of beat. The platform will compete with other DAWs like Soundation’s Collab Live, which introduced a synchronized collaboration feature in 2020.

Spotify acquired Soundtrap in 2017, and since it has introduced many features like a cloud-based podcast studio and collaborative voice notes for songwriters. Earlier this year, the Sweden-based company launched Soundtrap-powered music streaming in the online platform game Roblox.

Last month, Chris Messina noted Spotify might be testing a feature to bring Soundtrap features to its main app. We asked the company for a comment on the test, and we’ll update the story if we hear back. He also noted the live collaboration feature of Soundtrap last week before the official announcement today.