Planning Center Music Stand App Reviews

I have been using music stand for over 3 years and I love it. It has been a can’t live without tool. BUT . . . Starting back in February I have been having an issue with getting changes in my chord charts from planning center and my iPad Pro. Once I download my set to my iPad I can not update my changes from Planning Center unless I uninstall the app from my iPad and then reinstall it. I wish someone could help me resolve this issue. Any takers? It’s time to update my review. I am not sure where the glitch was weather with apple or this app but it no longer exists. Right after your last update 3 days ago. When I make changes in planning Center I can now update my iPad without uninstalling the app and then reinstalling it. Today was the first time in 8 months my iPad has updated. Hallelujah Parise the Lord!!!!! This is now working the way it was before February of this year. This will literally save me hours of time and a ton of frustration.

This app works great until you have to edit or make notations it takes a while to load. Also sometimes my Planning center online and Music Stand don’t match. I don’t know how that is possible. I have a two year old iPad.

I use this app every week and I have a couple of questions and features I’d like to see. 1: Forced on screen keyboard. When will Planning Center figure this out? It's a hassle to turn off my Bluetooth foot pedal every time I sign in and you can’t type annotations with a foot pedal active. Please give an option to force the on screen keyboard to display while Bluetooth keyboard devices (like page turner foot pedals) are connected. 2: Am I missing something or is the saved user function no longer in this version? I see the switch to “save login details” but no place to access saved users. Forcing everyone to log in every time is a big waste of time on shared devices. Thanks!

With an iPad2, When selecting the down arrow to load a different PDF of a song, other versions are not shown to be available.

The guys at PCO have really revolutionized the way that local churches prepare and communicate in order to make services and events excellent!

I actually love this app, and before today I would’ve given it five stars. I use it every day to woodshed the upcoming week’s music at my church. I just bought the iPhone X because the screen is bigger, hence I thought it would be easier to read the charts. But unfortunately this app doesn’t utilize the extra screen real estate :-( On the plus side however, I do have a really cool phone now! :-) Update: I was contacted by the developer who assured me an update is coming very soon that will fix this, so I’ll give it five stars because it is an outstanding app! :-)

Why is it so hard to zoom in?

No way to sign up???

I use this app at my church every week. It’s super convenient to have all your sheet music right in front of you! This app is awesome I recommend it to anyone in a worship band!

The update caused me to lose my notations, but Matt and the support team there worked hard to find me a temporary work around and they are in the process of sending out an update to permanently fix the problem. So what started out as a 1 star review, they have turned into a 5 star rating. Thanks guys!!!

Why do I now have to turn on my phone’s hotspot in order to use this app where there is no WiFi? This should not be necessary and wasn’t in previous versions.

Would be great for the apple pencil to start writing instantly on a sheet, instead of having press a series of buttons first. Also see my last notes: I'm a worship leader who's plays piano but I generally just use this apps for lyrics (not chords). But the lyrics sheets do you not say what key the current song is in, even though it includes other important info like bpm. Please address this and thanks!

Pretty good, but the fact that the zoom function isn't a pinch motion without hitting the zoom button makes it a little harder to use. It doesn't flow like it should.

I have been using planning center for years 5 to 6 years I think. Music stand is extremely handy for having all the right info in a consolidated place for everyone. It’s great live. I use a Bluetooth pedal to change backs and toggle the metronome for our in-ears. (I’m not a backing tracks and que sort of person.) It is perfect for that. As I flip music the metronome goes with magic. My one suggestion that would put this thing up to 5 is if the metronome started on the next measure when you change songs. Right now when you go to the next song it hiccups so even if your playing the song at the same tempo you can’t go straight into the next song smoothly. Somebody at planning center let me know you guys are working on that and I will hark this the greatest app ever or at least since flappy bird and vine.

I really love Music Stand, but I have one request. Please make a way for everyone to be able to transpose their annotated copy, not just Admins. I play guitar and use a capo. Currently, I have to transpose and type in the new chords. Thanks!

Great app! Has everything I want and more!

Update on 4.1.5 This latest revision seems to have fixed all the previous problems. And we see multiple other improvements/features also added. Duplicating/Reordering pages now assigns a separate number to each page so highlights to one page stay specific to that page! Wonderful! This has made things so much more efficient. Everything is working seamlessly again. I’d rate this 6 stars if I could. Thank you so much for keeping at it and making it even better than we asked! Forgive my earlier impatience! I just didn’t know how hard you must have working the whole time to correct and improve this app. I’ve also seen some major improvements on the Planning Center app. Double Kudos!!! 🌈🎉👍🙏🥂 Update: Thank you for responding, Matt. Just FYI, I had been searching all over for some email response, but found nothing. At least I can see your response here. If version 4.1.3 is the promised fix to problems I listed in my email, then I’m sad to say there’s much more to do. Page turns are much better now. And saving now is also much faster too. Our iPad Pros are less than one year. We have active IT at church always keeping our iOS updated. Still can’t logon to my user profile from another device to edit songs while practicing at home. I mean, I can, but it doesn’t get saved on same profile on church iPad. Before the big upgrade all these things worked perfectly. This is a big problem now. And even worse, since latest update, we’ve lost a ton of song highlights/notes made directly on our church iPads (used during services). This means we may have lost a years worth of work invested into this program! I’ve given you my cell phone in email. I feel a call is imperative at this point. Could we please schedule a time? Older; Our church has had issues since Music Stand’s latest updates in the last month or so. Though the extra features are nice, they’ve created multiple problems for us. I’ve written developers three times asking help. Absolute Zero response! * Pages are delayed when turning * If we edit/highlight songs from another device changes are not being saved where needed on performance iPads. This worked flawlessly till more recently. Now nothing is saved unless made specifically on same device. We don’t have time to make highlights during practice so we do it on personal devices at home. Big problem for us now! * user profiles aren’t saving * and there’s more but biggest problem is their total lack of support now. Very disappointing. Would’ve rated app much higher if developers would have responded in any way.

1) I often experience issues with Music Stand refreshing on my iPad after a plan has been updated on the computer. 2) Program sometimes freezes during worship service and will not advance to the next page. I love the program 80% of the time, but it has been less reliable over the past year. I’ve used it for many years.

I'd love to try this app but every time I click a button I get logged out :/

The fact that the team at Planning Center does everything they can to aid the local Church makes me a big fan. The fact that their user integration among all of their apps allows me to update songs, service order, notes, and much more compels me to suggest planning center to every church leader that I come in contact with. Music Stand is one of the apps that I tried to do without for a while, and I just couldn't. This app is so helpful, and once you take some time to learn how it functions, you'll find that the lower starred reviews in iTunes are not helpful. If you already use planning center services, spend the little extra and get music stand (and if possible ask for a page turn pedal for Christmas). You'll be blown away, and if you need help, the team at Planning Center have the best customer service on earth!

Very useful. I need a foot pedal to change pages but that's not the apps fault. Thank you for making this app.

This app is a great tool. No need to have paper, copies of music, or worrying about song order and details - this app does all of that for you!

New update is nice, but gone is the little bubble that shows the track clock while scrubbing or setting loop limits. It makes it very difficult to accurately scrub to an exact point in the track. Update: the “scrubbing bubble” is back! Thanks to the tech support team for the quick help in resolving.

The best update so far...anything I would have changed about it, you guys did in this update. Many thanks!!

App opens and then closes (crashes). Can’t use it. iPhone 6 with latest OS.

Downloaded app and could not get in.

Writing on this app with a stylus or finger DOES NOT WORK. If fixed, this app would be great.

Thank you!

I used Music Stand for the first time live this morning. I usually use OnSong, but the team is now using Planning Center, so wanted to try it. In general I found it ok to work with. The biggest bugbear I found was when a page is zoomed, you can't scroll the single page when you're singing or playing - if you've zoomed to one verse, it won't let you see the next verse without going black to the zoom-page to change the view.

It’s generally a very good product and I’m glad that our church works with it. Services App works great – how ever Music Stand is somewhat buggy and at the moment close to useless since; – Most annoying: Annotations are lost (aka not saved) when annotating a lead sheet – this is very frustrating when you annotate a service and then, when you actually want to play, your annotations are missing! Please fix asap… – Some songs don’t load (mp3 etc.) even tough they are added in Services App I have to switch to Services App to listen to start the sound and then switch back to MS to read the lead-sheet. – Youtube integration for videos would be nice (links from Services App)

My church uses this app, and not even the seasoned pros could come up with an explanation for why nothing would open on my phone. I tried closing all the way out and reopening, logging out and back in, even deleting the app and redone loading it. Please fix this bug.

One of things I loved about past versions of Music Stand: while you were in the application the IPAD's auto-lock was disabled. So if you are on the same chord chart for 10 minutes, for example, the IPAD will not lock. In the latest version this behavior has changed as the IPAD auto-lock tries to lock during a performance; not good. Please fix this!

Seems simple to make a text box be multi-line. It's amazingly difficult to notate song order without it.

Our worship team of approximately 50 members use this software, and it worked great for the first few years, but in the last month this software has had major issues. The program constantly freezes, requiring hard resets, reboots, and often deleting the program entirely and having to reinstall from the App Store. The program does this on multiple internet connections, so this is not a connectivity problem. We like this program, but need it to work without problems!

I finally loaded this today on my phone and iPad. The drop-down arrow that is supposed to be on each song so that you can you view the sheet music does not exist for me. Everyone at church has this function I can’t seem to get any help

I use this app multiple times a week at different churches. Not sure I can actually lead worship without it. When combined with a page turning device, simply amazing. I do wish the annotation was more intuitive and more powerful.

It gets the job done, but feels like paper in a digital age... For whatever reason, they insist on displaying sheets as PDFs with a fixed layout and pagination, making it much more cumbersome and unnecessarily less useful. And dark mode only inverts colors on the index. When I asked about this I was told to invert the colors on my iPad from settings—really? This is not a solution. I've actually stopped using chord sheets at all as a result. It would be great to have a REAL digital solution.

This app is incredible! If anyone is wondering how to get yourself and your band on the right track and organized, this is the best app for that. I highly recommend getting this in addition to a planning center online account to help bring your church to the next level! The only thing that I would suggest is making a feature to increase fonts for chords and lyrics.

I loved this app and I’m sure the new features are great but always used it to import the set to onsong and now that feature doesn’t work. Such a bummer!

Been using Music Stand for over 5 years. When it works it works great, but here are times when it delays saving annotations made with Apple pen on iPad Pro... very frustrating... not sure it’s just pen. Band mate said he had issues with app freezing on him too and he is not on an iPad Pro. This issue is intermittent.

An update a few weeks before Easter? That's brave... Is brave the right word? Someone else will have to answer that, cause I won't be upgrading until after Easter! 👍🏻

I love I app but I wish that the individual could make their own plans instead only being able to follow the main plan.

The notation features are very limited. I had been using a PDF reader app for my chord charts for a long time. The nice change about this app when utilizing CCLI charts is it puts all the individual charts with your notations in a continuous format for each set list. The only issue is, the notation options are TERRIBLE! Your notes will always be there once you put them on the chart, until your worship leader changes the key and then you need to re-input the same notes on the new chart. The fact the text is only a single line and you cannot type multiple lines means you attempt to line up multiple text boxes to write a list of notes. The pen tool is also very rough and jagged when trying to write which makes it look like a child wrote the hand written notes. Not having pinch to zoom makes it so awkward. Overall, the notation needs improvement before I can in conscience give this app a good review

Literally my only music stand. Makes a clean stage presence with this app, iPad and microphone stand. Easy to use program and super helpful. I love the annotation, highlighting and day/night mode. You have to keep updating your music so you aren't playing in E without knowing the leader updated the music files to F. Love this app and Services. Keep up the great work, and funny update notations.

I'm a musical director at my local church. I'm seeing like 5 to 8 copies of one song every time I refresh my app. Also, certain songs I can’t open even when I’ve edited them myself on my MacBook, saved them & can’t open on my iPhone or my musician’s for some reason. However, this is a very good app for churches & my musicians. Just these glitches are bothering me. & when I type up a song & I add the sequences (Intro, verse chorus, bridge etc.) & chords, on the projector app (which is also very convenient) it displays everything 🙄 glitches, hopefully a new update fixes this.

Latest update broke the annotations again. Mine are all missing and you can't add any new ones.

Whatever song I call up, the play button is greyed out, even though I have an MP3 linked to that song in PCO.

Won't let me log in, as soon as I do the app shuts down. Or the app will open and shut down before I even do anything.

The problem is, you never know if your notations will be there the next time. Or, as just happened to me--they may just disappear from a song in the middle of a set. My opinion is, there is an emphasis on "innovation" w/o maintaining integrity & reliability of basic functions (annotations.)

Love using the App from my iPad Pro. Let’s me see things clearly and has proven invaluable to our whole team. No more photocopying or paper shuffling. I’d like to suggest a feature which I call Performance mode. When we are in the middle of a worship service the app can too easily go into edit or resize mode when I’m merely trying to change the page. If we could turn on something to indicate we’re performing now, temporarily lock out edit features it’d be great. Trying to hit cancel on a zoom or tap to get out of edit mode while playing is a challenge.

I keep getting error 404 (you are not connected to the Internet) when i am connected and it doesn't save my annotations. Please fix soon. Frustrating when i need to make notes on a Sunday morning. Thank you!

Outstanding App to keep the worship team on the same page! Very easy to use and very dependable. My only complaint is you have to turn off Bluetooth to make annotations. This is frustrating to deal with in practice. Otherwise this App is PERFECT! Thanks!!

Reliable and helpful! Love it!

It's amazing how many times the connection drops when connected to the main iPad. That means when we move to the next page of a song and the connection is lost, the other members of the team that are connected to my iPad, have to STOP PLAYING and turn the page themselves.

As a guest musician I just wanted to edit out the non musical items (it's called music stand for a reason) and have only to songs we were doing on the screen, well when I deleted the temps I did not want, it changed the whole service on Planning Center, well this messed up the schedule. Why can't we just be able to make changes on music stand only? I didn't want to change the whole service because I'm not the person making the schedule. Can we have an option for this? Rod terrell

This app used to work great. Now when you try to add notes it doesn't save them half the time. Today I typed a lot of notes on one chart that took a lot of time. When I saved the sheet the font become huge and unreadable. Terrible update.

Is there any way to prevent the audio files from advancing to the next song automatically? I would like to use Music Stand to run my loops since I’m already using a foot controller to turn pages. You have the skip file feature which is helpful, but really would prefer to just toggle the audio on based on which song is selected, while not having to worry about it starting the next one in the playlist during a service. Thoughts? Thanks for all you do to serve the church!

Thanks for a great app but help with a few remaining bugs please. The app takesover 40 seconds to save edits and the edits briefly disappear and the music then briefly disappears. Also, will lose edits occasionally - and will hang up and need to be manually closed. Running your latest version (updates automatically). Keep up the good work! Thanks!

I’ve lost count the number of times my worship leader will make a change on a Sunday morning and only half of the band gets the change on their iPad when refreshing music stand. It’s nearly a deal breaker and the only workaround is to delete Music Stand and reinstall.

The app will not load PDFs if there are a large number. I am not able to view any of a plan with 11 PDFs

Imagine my surprise and horror when I got to church this morning and discovered that this app doesn't work offline. It only shows plans when it is online and does not hold your current plan for use when offline. This defeats the offline annotation upgrade and makes the app completely useless for any noncellular iPads where there is no wifi. If you need your plans to be available offline I would suggest downloading the Legacy version so you don't get stuck.

I can't login without registration and there's no option to register???

This was a wonderful app. Now every time I open it it wants me to sign in but we use it in a place that has no internet. Useless brain dead decision to force login when all the data is cached. Please make this app good again. Has left me stranded with no music several times.

UPDATE: The latest update you mentioned appears to have solved my problem. You were correct in the assumption that I was using an Apple Pen. Thank you so much for the quick fix! I am adjusting my review accordingly to reflect the awesomeness of your app. Thanks! OLD: I have never had problems like this prior to this update, but now every other time I hit “done” after making annotation, all annotations get erased. Not just on the one page I am on, but multiple pages get erased. This wipes out a lot of my work and is extremely frustrating. Please fix as it makes the app useless. Prior to this I have been a big fan of it. Here’s hoping for a quick fix!

Being used to pinch to zoom, I end up flipping pages in the middle of the set. Please make this consistent with 2015 OS. Also, I need to see and open youtube links for practice.

This is a very good and usable app that does what it is expected to do. The last update changed the way annotations are created/modified, and with that some very necessary functions were removed. Adding notes to a chart is critical as well as where they are placed. The last update removed the ability to change their location. It's always been a problem to not have paragraph capability in annotations (or a fixed width font like courier), but to have to write a note multiple times just to get it where you NEED it is unacceptable. At least before I could create them and drag them to a position. This is even more critical when writing multiple lines (individually) and having to line them up. Oh... To be able to toss a measure of tablature onto a chart to capture a unique passage for future use! Please fix the annotations.

This update has a major flaw. When you make any markings, it keeps drawing after you hit DONE. You have to go back and erase the mark you made or back out of it. Please fix!