What's the best way to link backing tracks to my songs?

What's the best way to link backing tracks to my songs?

OnSong allows you to link backing tracks to your chord charts for practice or performance.  There are two main ways that you can link backing tracks using your iTunes Music Library or the OnSong Media Library.  Discover below the advantages and possible challenges of each method.

iTunes Music Library
iOS was launched with the iPhone in 2007 with the promise to bring the ease-of-use and popularity of the iPod to mobile phones.  While much has changed since then, iTunes was app and service that enabled the easy purchase and playback of music on Apple devices and computers.  Over the past few years, Apple has transitioned iTunes into "Apple Music" which allows you to pay a subscription and playback your favorite tracks by streaming them on all your devices. There is coming a time where the name "iTunes" will be adequate, but for the sake of historical consistency, we still call this the "iTunes Music Library".

Until Apple Music, you would need to sync your device with a computer to move tracks from your computer to your portable device for playback.  This music was placed into a library that you could access using an app now called simply "Music". This app displays both tracks you have access to through the cloud, Apple Music, and locally stored on your device in your iTunes Music Library.  When you choose to link backing tracks in your iTunes Music Library to your chord charts, you're accessing your library through iOS.  OnSong links the track by storing the title, artist, and album information in your OnSong library.  This is done because the unique identifier assigned to the track in your iTunes Music Library could change at any time, or be different for different users on different devices.

Advantages
What are some advantages of using the iTunes Music Library to link tracks to chord charts?
  1. Keep one copy of the audio asset across multiple apps.
  2. Ability to playback tracks streamed from the cloud.
  3. Ability to play tracks that are digital rights managed.
  4. Sharing your chord charts with others allows playback from their iTunes Music Library.
  5. Respects system EQ, Soundcheck, and adjustments set using iTunes.
  6. Resilient playback in the rare event that OnSong closes unexpectedly.

Pitfalls
The biggest issue with iTunes Music Library is that you're subject to limitations of the Apple ecosystem.
  1. Difficulty adding content and synchronize to your library.
  2. Crossfade, pan and volume adjustment in OnSong is unavailable when streaming or DRM tracks.
  3. Updates to iOS can change or break how playback works.
  4. Changes to your iTunes Music Library can cause links to be lost.
  5. Restoring from backup also requires you to synchronize your iTunes library separately.
  6. Allows easy selection of Apple Music streamed audio that may not play at different venues.
Best Practices
If you choose to link audio tracks from your iTunes Music Library, consider the following:
  1. Ensure that you can reestablish your iTunes Music Library on a backup device if needed.
  2. Download each track for offline use in the Music app to avoid unexpected playback issues.
  3. Change the player you want to use, or the display of Apple Music tracks in Audio Playback Settings.

OnSong Media Library
OnSong features a media library where you can import audio, image, and video assets for use in OnSong.  You can import tracks into OnSong by tapping on gear icon in the Menubar to open the Utilities Menu and then tap on Editors and Audio Media Library.  From there you can tap on the + button to import audio tracks just like you would songs into your library.

Advantages
Using tracks already in your OnSong library has some great advantages:
  1. Files are backed up along side your OnSong library for easy restoration.
  2. You can change the name, artist, and other information easily.
  3. Crossfade, pan, and change the relative volume of tracks.
  4. Avoids issues that may arise in iOS updates.

Pitfalls
There are some problems with this technique.
  1. Since media files are backed up, your backup files can become quite large.
  2. Does not use the features of the built-in Music app such as EQ, Soundcheck, etc.
  3. Cannot play streaming or digital rights managed (DRM) files.

Best Practices
If you choose to link backing tracks using the OnSong Media Library, consider the following:
  1. If you back up frequently, consider omitting media files by turning off the Backup Media Files in Advanced Settings.
  2. Store your media files on Dropbox or other remote storage so you can import them to reestablish links when you restore.
  3. Use MP3 or M4A files to reduce storage demands on the OnSong library.

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