Why Jam Pad?

Most of Jam Pad's features work completely without internet access.

This is not just an indispensable feature for train rides or walks in the forest in countries with bad network coverage, it also makes Jam Pad generally very fast and snappy to use.

Even collaborative features are usable offline and only require internet access for synchronization.

Each space starts as a single-device space. That means its data is stored on your device only and will not be synced anywhere else (cloud or other devices) unless you explicitly want that.

Multi-device spaces allow you to synchronize your data peer-to-peer across your own devices, fully end-to-end encrypted, optionally even over the internet.

Cloud spaces allow access from anywhere at anytime. They also enable collaborative features. For this, it is technically necessary to save your data on servers. Our servers are protected by state-of-the art security measures and hosted in Europe.

For music studios and other organizations that need collaboration without handing data over to third parties, we plan to offer a server license in the future. This will allow you to self-host the Jam Pad server engine on your own infrastructure. All data — including user identity management — stays under your control, for example on a NAS or private server. If you are an organization and interested in self-hosting, please contact info@helgoboss.org.

A Jam Pad account is only required if you want to create or join a cloud space (to unlock Jam Pad's collaborative features) or if you want to synchronize in-app purchases across multiple platforms.

Jam Pad is available for Android, iOS, macOS and Windows with most features available on all of those platforms. Synchronization of spaces between any of those platforms works seamlessly.

Jam Pad is not a one-way street for your data. You can export a space including all of its clips and other data at any time. The export format is well documented. Want to migrate everything somewhere else at some point? Possible!

Vice versa, it's possible to import a space. If you have existing data that you want to migrate to Jam Pad, that's only a matter of building a file that corresponds to the export format and importing it into the app.

Jam Pad allows you to create backups manually that you can restore whenever necessary.

A multi-device space or cloud space will automatically be replicated on multiple machines, providing an additional safety layer.

Most interestingly, Jam Pad embraces a "never lose anything" philosophy. Each space has a built-in safety net: every change is recorded, and nothing is lost. A future upgrade will give you the possibility to to browse your complete space history. Soon, you'll be able to jump back to any moment.

Despite that safety net, you have the option to permanently delete media files, if you really want. This can be useful to save storage space or to delete accidentally imported recordings.

There are many apps out there which look attractive but fall short when it comes to carrying out operations under the hood. Jam Pad is not one of them!

As an example, the way Jam Pad lays out its data on your local device storage is very logical - one space corresponds to one folder. Within that space folder, core data is strictly separated from user- and device-specific data. That makes it possible to pass one space 1:1 to another Jam Pad installation just by copying a directory without the user- or device -specific data. This data layout also makes automated file-system-based backups a breeze.

In stark contrast to other offers out there, Jam Pad is not just about collaboration. It starts being a useful tool much sooner in the production lifecycle. You can benefit from it even as a solo artist. Later you can use the same tool that you already love, for doing collaboration in bands or with studios, so everything goes smoothly. Jam Pad has a wide range of usage scenarios and can grow together with your needs!

Jam Pad offers many great features for free. Some of the paid features are available as one-time purchases, which grants you a lifetime license without running fees. A paid monthly subscription is only necessary for features such as cloud sync, which require regular maintenance and cause ongoing costs on our side. Even for cloud sync, invited space members don't need to pay, only space owners.