Thank you for pointing this out — you are absolutely right that Stage Traxx already allows each musician to use local lyrics when joining a Network Session. This is a very powerful feature.
However, after trying to use this workflow with my band, we ran into some practical difficulties that make it quite complex to manage in real life, especially for larger groups.
🎯 Where the Difficulty Appears in Practice
For the local-lyrics approach to work, each musician must first receive the song file and prepare their own version with their own annotations on their own device.
This creates a few challenges:
Multiple versions of the same song file start to exist
It becomes unclear who is responsible for preparing what
File management and backups become confusing very quickly
🎵 Real Example from My Band
In my band:
I am responsible for preparing the horn sheet music
I prepare the lyrics for the singers
I also play keyboards and have my own annotations
My computer is the host device
So in practice, I need to:
Prepare my version of the song on my computer
Physically take each horn player’s device (which is often not possible, since they use them daily)
Share the file to each device
Then, on each device, set up the specific sheet music or annotations for that musician
This becomes very time-consuming and hard to maintain.
💾 The Backup and Update Problem
Because each device now has a different version of the same song:
Each device requires its own backup
If I change something simple (for example, a backing track or song structure), the whole sharing process has to be repeated for every musician
There is a constant risk of devices being out of sync
🏠 The Collaboration Problem
Another limitation is that musicians cannot easily work from home on the same material.
Since each device holds its own version of the song with its own annotations:
The drummer’s notes live only on the drummer’s device
The horn sheets live only where they were manually added
There is no shared “source of truth” for the song
💡 What Would Make This Much Easier
It would be much simpler if all of this could be managed from the host device and/or through a cloud-style shared song file.
A system where:
The host prepares all musician views from one place
Musicians simply select their view when connecting
Annotations added by a musician are saved to a shared project
Everyone with access to that song or playlist can retrieve the updated information
Similar to how collaborative documents work (like shared files in Pages or other cloud tools).
This would:
Eliminate file confusion
Simplify backups
Keep everyone always in sync
Allow true collaborative preparation without needing parallel apps or manual file transfers
The current local-lyrics solution is powerful, but in real band workflows it becomes difficult to manage. A more centralized and collaborative approach would make this feature much more practical and scalable.