Your first songs

Most working bands already have a song list somewhere — a YouTube playlist, an OnSong export, a Google Sheet, a BandHelper account. Loadout imports from all of those. If you're starting from scratch, you can also enter songs one at a time.

The fastest path: YouTube → ChordPro

Got a specific song with a YouTube reference? Use YouTube → ChordPro from the import page. Paste the URL, and Loadout (via Claude with web-search) produces a stage-ready chord chart with lyrics. If it can't find chords for that song, it falls back to a lyrics-only chart with a note so you can finish it by hand.

This is the most metadata-rich path for a single song — title, artist, lyrics, and a chart when one's available.

YouTube playlist (bulk)

For a whole playlist at once:

1. Open Import from the side nav (or hit From a YouTube playlist in the welcome wizard's library step).
2. Paste the playlist URL.
3. Preview the parsed tracks. Skip anything you don't want.
4. Commit. The songs land in your library.

What gets imported: title and artist (parsed from "Artist — Title" style video titles).

What does NOT get imported: lyrics, chord charts, key, BPM. Those land empty.

To fill those in:

• Per song: open the song, hit Import via YouTube → ChordPro (drops the same YouTube URL into the chart importer).
• Or edit the song directly to add the chart, key, BPM by hand.

From BandHelper or OnSong

Already running on something else? Upload your export.

• BandHelper — go to BandHelper → Export Songs, download the file (tab-separated .txt or CSV both work), upload to Loadout's From BandHelper or OnSong importer. Map any columns Loadout doesn't auto-detect. Commit.
• OnSong — drop a .onsong or .cho / .chordpro file. Full ChordPro is parsed — directives, inline chords, all of it.

Starting from scratch

In the welcome wizard, Start from scratch opens the ChordPro editor with a blank song. In the app, hit New song from the songs list.

Required: title. Everything else (artist, key, BPM, duration, tags, the chart itself) is optional — but the more you fill in, the more Loadout can do later (transpose, autoscroll pacing, AI setlist generation all rely on this data).

Tip: Don't sweat ChordPro syntax on day one. Even just pasting lyrics with chords sprinkled in is good enough to read on stage. The ChordPro basics article covers what to learn next.

What's next

• Your first setlist — once your library has at least a few songs, build a list.
• ChordPro basics — the bracket syntax, directives, the patterns worth learning.
• Importing — the full reference for every importer.