Why a Spotify or Apple Music playlist fails on show night
It is what everyone tries first, and it breaks in the same place every time. A streaming playlist assumes the venue Wi-Fi will hold up. Sometimes true in an empty hall, often false once six hundred people walk in with their phones. Then there are the ads, and the crossfade that starts your next routine over the last three seconds of the previous one.
Most of all, it does not hold your edits: the version trimmed to 2:40, the one without the intro, the one where the chorus repeats so the little ones have time to clear the stage.
And it cannot be handed over. Your sound tech does not want a link. They want files, in order, clearly named, sitting on their laptop before the doors open.
How to keep several edits of the same track
Every routine on the program carries its own file. You upload an MP3 (up to 20 MB), and you can keep up to five different edits side by side: slightly slowed down, without the intro, fading out at 3:30. This is the part that changes daily life the most - you stop overwriting a track every time you want to try something else.
One edit is marked active at any given time. That one is the single source of truth everywhere else: its length feeds your total run time, and it is the one that goes into the sound tech's archive. The other four stay available without ever polluting what gets handed over, so there is no way to send the wrong file.
Length is not something you declare. Prepashow reads the file on upload and takes its real duration. Upload a shorter cut and everything that depends on it recalculates on its own.
Worth knowing: if several people work on the show, "upload a track" and "decide which edit is the right one" are two separate permissions. You can hand the audio work to someone who uploads new edits, without giving away the artistic call. You still choose.
How long will your recital actually run?
The venue will ask. So will the front-of-house team, and every parent planning dinner afterwards.
Adding up your MP3s gives the wrong answer. Between two routines there is applause, dancers clearing the stage, the next group coming on, sometimes a riser to move. So Prepashow keeps two numbers apart:
- Raw time - the sum of every track, intermissions included.
- Real run time - the same, plus the set change after each routine. A default applies across the show, and you can override it number by number: forty-five seconds after a solo, three minutes after the finale that puts forty dancers and a platform on stage.
The calculation runs per act and for the whole show. You get a curtain-down time you can actually give the venue, not an optimistic guess.
A music player for dance teachers, made for rehearsals
No separate playback software to install on a studio laptop. Every track in the show, in program order, on one page. Play, pause, next, previous. The numbering follows your program: a routine with no MP3 yet simply does not show up in the player, and it does not shift the numbering of the others.
Two controls earn their keep in the studio. Loop, for running the same eight counts thirty times with a group. And set change simulation: between two tracks the player holds the pause you configured, with a countdown on screen. Your run-throughs happen at the real pace of show night, not at playlist pace.
You can also switch between edits mid-rehearsal, to settle an argument about two versions by hearing both in context.
What files does your sound tech actually need?
This is where email threads usually go wrong. One button, "Export for sound tech", and Prepashow builds a single ZIP that brings the audio and the paperwork together:
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Every active track, numbered in exact running order:
01_Act-1_Little-Swans.mp3,02_Act-1_Hip-Hop-Teens.mp3, and so on. No accents and no special characters in the filenames, because booth machines do not always handle them gracefully. - Intermission music, numbered in the same sequence.
- A technical running order in PDF - it doubles as the sound cue sheet, listing act by act each number, its length, the exact filename that goes with it, and flagging the routines that have no track yet.
No more three-page email making sure the booth understood. You send one link, they download one ZIP, and everything lines up.
Need music edited for a routine?
Prepashow organises your tracks, it does not create them. Plenty of teachers know exactly what they want to hear without having the time or the software to do it: cut a long intro, take forty seconds out of the middle, join two songs with no audible seam, slow a section slightly for a beginner group, or lift a finale that drags.
We offer that as a service. Tell us what you want in plain English, not audio jargon: "start it at the chorus", "it has to fit in 2:30", "join these two tracks so nobody hears the join". We send back an MP3 ready to upload onto the routine.
This service is not part of the subscription and is billed per edit.
What is free, what is not
Uploading your MP3s, keeping several edits, working out your run time and using the rehearsal player: all of that is free, on one show, within the storage included.
Going Premium lifts the storage limit and unlocks every export (PDF, sound tech ZIP, and the rest). You can start documenting your whole show to get a feel for the tool, and upgrade only when you actually need to hand something over - usually once four or five routines are ready.