Planning Center News

  • By Aaron Stewart

iPhone and Music Stand updates

Aaron at the booth in Albuquerque

To Order the X-Clip for the iPad, Click Here

Greetings from Albuquerque! I’m sitting in our Planning Center booth at the National Worship Leader Conference here in New Mexico on the last day of a great conference! I love getting to travel around and meet all of our extremely loyal Planning Center users and hear about how PCO is helping you be more effective in your ministry; that’s what Ministry Centered Technologies is all about!

We recently introduced Planning Center Music Stand and the response has been great! By the time you read this, there should be an iPad app update available for download. We’ve added offline support for your last 10 accessed plans! With this new version, the Music Stand app will automatically open up to your last plan, and even if you don’t have internet access, you’ll be able to see any of the last 10 plans you’ve used along with all of the related files.

In other Music Stand news, we’ve done a little bit of a price reduction. It was an additional $10 a month for any church to enable music stand for all of their users, but after some feedback, we felt like we should drop the price for churches on the lower packages. So effective immediately, our $14 a month Lite churches can enable Music Stand for only $2 a month, and our $29 a month Basic churches can enable Music Stand for only $5 more a month! Your site owner can sign up for Music Stand from the site settings page, and then anyone from your account can access the web version from each plan under the rehearse button, or using the free iPad app.

A lot of you have been asking about the hardware we announced for the Music Stand including the mic clip and foot pedal. Manufacturing a clip has proven to be quite the challenging process and is taking a bit longer than expected. We are in the final design stages and hope to go to manufacturing in the next week or two, but unfortunately it will be at least another month before it’s available. As far as the foot pedal goes, we want to recommend bluetooth foot pedals that are being made by other companies but are not available yet either. Rest assured, we will let you know as SOON as either of these items is available! For more information on ordering, click here.

And finally, we’re really excited about the release of the new iPhone software, iOS 4. We’ve recompiled the Planning Center App to take advantage of  ”multitasking” in the new software and man, does it make a difference! The update will let the app save its state, so that whenever you launch the app, it is exactly where you left off. It seems like a small thing, but after using it for the last week, it makes such a big difference! Look for the app update shortly after iOS 4 is released.

Well, that’s it for now. If any of you are coming to the National Worship Leader conference in Kansas City next month, make sure to stop by our booth, say hi, and get a free tshirt. We’d love to meet you!

Aaron Stewart, Product Manager

29 comments

Martha #permalink

Thanks for the reduced pricing, that will make it affordable for us little guys!

Wes #permalink

First, all these tools and product updates are wonderful. PCO allows our worship team (tech, band, singers and speakers) to stay together and on task during our services. I do have two questions. 1) is there a chance to link certain content on PCO live with the Music stand app? Our band leader would love to see the clocks (countdown and the ahead/behind feature) and be able to take part of the chat.
2) Is there a way to add notes to segments in PCO Live? While the service is going on would love to add ideas or corrections during each segment so we can review it later during staff meeting.

Thanks again for all your work!

    Kirsten Chong #permalink

    I second the request for being able to make notes in the PCO live feature! Our floor directors have been wanting that for a while! :-)

Barry Westman #permalink

Thanks for the updates, and we’ll see you in Kansas!!

Marilynn #permalink

Any plans to add the ability to make notes on the charts? This is probably the biggest reason our church is not going to use Music Stand. Our musicians and singers are quite used to jotting notes to themselves on keys and what to do when, especially when the worship leader changes things from what is already written. Music Stand currently doesn’t allow for these notes to be added anywhere a musician or singer might need them in the song.

If this feature was there, all that would stand in our way is hardware.

    jwalklin #permalink

    I second the request for notes!

    Dan Vukmirovich #permalink

    Third!

    Kyle Folger #permalink

    Fourth!

    Jay #permalink

    Fifth!!!

    C.J. #permalink

    Sixth!!!!

Sam Aragon #permalink

will you be creating an app for Driod users?

Jeremy Anderson #permalink

All I can say is……”I want a free t-shirt!” :-D

TJ #permalink

Thank you all SO MUCH for working fast and taking the time to release an offline update. So many companies wait until there are a multiple updates that can be bundled together at one time for ONE great update. It shows you really care when you released the offline update. It seems as if you recognized the importance of this and got it out as soon as possible. WE ARE THANKFUL!!

katiewillard #permalink

Thanks everyone for the comments!

@Wes 1- Not right now, but could be a possibility down the road.
2-Besides the chat features in LIVE, there isn’t a way to add anything else.

@Marilynn We do have plans for this!

@Sam There is a mobile version of PCO that you can use on your droid. But we are actually looking for a developer who could develop an actual app for it. We have not been able to find anyone yet so if you know anyone, please send them our way! :)

    Tami #permalink

    I just got an android phone and haven’t found PCO in the market. How can I locate the mobile version you mentioned? Are you referring to access to your regular webpage via mobile web or something else? Sorry, I’m not too tech savvy, in the over 40 group :)

    katiewillard #permalink

    @Tami On your phone, just go to http://www.planningcenteronline.com on the browser and it will automatically give you the mobile version of our site.

Jeff House #permalink

I just signed up for Music Stand because I was so excited about the new lower price for us little guys.

It this iPad only, or can I download a PC / Mac app?

I have an iPhone – but couldn’t find Music Stand in the App store – but all of our worship team have laptops so would love for them to now run Music stand on their laptops (combination Macs/PCs).

Thanks!

    katiewillard #permalink

    @Jeff You don’t need to download an app just for your computer. The app is only for the iPad. To access this on your PC/Mac, go into one of your plans and under ‘rehearse’ in the top right area, hover your mouse over that and you’ll see the music stand option. Click on that and it will go from there! Also there’s no iPhone app for Music Stand.

Hope Helme #permalink

Thank you so much. . . I am loving music stand . . . Although the ability to write notes directly from my iPad would be fabulous, for now, I can take my notes at rehearsal and then just scan in my revised chart and upload it in about a minute. . . Thanks for the price reduction, which made a huge difference!! I love PCO!

Rik #permalink

Any chance for an “on the fly” transpose button in the app?

katiewillard #permalink

@Rik Probably not any time soon but thanks for the feedback!

Joel J. #permalink

Nice. This was way out of our range, but now it’s a possibility. Thanks!

Jason Pamblanco #permalink

Bought 5 iPads Monday and plan to roll out with them Sunday. We have four services a week and probably sing 75+ songs per month so getting the database up and rolling has been a challenge, but in the end it will save us so much time, paper, time, ink, time, money, oh and time. Thank you for a great idea brought to life. We are waiting with baited breath for the ability to make notes. Our accompanist might bake you cookies if you did that (and soon)!

TPAGE #permalink

Can you recommend a site / brand of USB foot pedal that will work?
And where can I find one of those nifty stands/ipad holders as pictured?
Thanks!

Sue Wade #permalink

Looking forward to release for iphone. Good job. Also, notes for the ipad a great idea.

Trae Windham #permalink

I know there were discussions before about adding the ability to pencil in notes and changes, like Music Reader, has there been any developments on that front. I have both Music Reader and Music stand on my Ipad, and while I love the ease of use that Music Stand offers, making notes in the Charts forces me not to utilize it as much as I would like.

    katiewillard #permalink

    Thanks for the post! This is something that we’ve been working on right now. If all goes well it should be ready within the next month or two!

M Christine #permalink

Seventh!

M Christine #permalink

Ooops, you did it already. How cool is that?! Can’t wait to get my iPad to run rehearsals and worship services with PCO.