Bounce Boss – Collaborate Like a Boss

Bounce Boss is a collaborative file transfer and management system. It was just released recently and we reached out to Tom Frampton (co-founder with Rich Hollis) to take it for a test run.

We enjoyed the functionality of it and the potential for people sending far more files than ourselves. It was easy to upload files, comment on them, and compare versions – all in all, successful at what it set it out to do.

This article will take you through the upload process and point out its features and what we think of them. Continue below.

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“Bounce Boss enables people to collaborate intelligently so they can focus their energy on progress and be more successful.”

Bounce Boss operates as an online project manager and a file sharing system. The first screen you will see when signing in is the ‘My Projects’ tab. There you can sort through your various projects and see relevant data like when the most recent update was made, any deadlines that have been set, and comment activity.

 

 

 

 

Creating new projects is easy, just click “Create New” on the left side, or “Send Files” at the top of the page. You will be transported to the page where you can upload new versions of a track, different mixes, stems, and any reference tracks you want.

 

 

We think the layout is a slam-dunk. Bounce Boss provides exactly what you would need to work with any number of collaborators.

You can add collaborators from this page and Bounce Boss will send an email to your engineer, producer, music managers, etc. You can even send multiple tracks from this page so if you’re working on an EP or album you don’t have to create a new project each time.

The upload doesn’t take too long so you can update your files if you’re in a rush.

 

Once you’ve uploaded your files and shared them, you can access the project page.

Project Page

On each project page, you will find an intuitive user interface. At the top left is the track tab where you can switch between songs and below that are the file categories. If you have updated files to add then simply click upload to add them.

 

 

 

 

If you have multiple songs in a project you can use the track tabs to move between them, and preview your different versions of tracks with the file categories. You can even switch between tracks while they’re playing and playback will continue.

There are a number of handy keyboard shortcuts to use to navigate more easily between your versions. Learning them won’t take too long and they’ll serve you for the better. It’s these little details that make Bounce Boss so useful.

Below is the track waveform. Bounce Boss separates itself from the competition by displaying the Integrated Loudness and True Peak level at the right side. These values are important to know for release planning. A mastering engineer will want to know them, and a music manager can see if it’s at the desired loudness for the right platform.

 

 

The waveform is where the action happens, it’s the music that it’s about after all. You can interact with the waveform by clicking it and jumping the play head to that position. Underneath is the play button and level match button.

The level match feature is incredible. It automatically matches the volume levels of your tracks as you switch between them. That way, you can make judgments without being influenced by level changes.

If you click and drag on the waveform you can loop a section which is useful for critical listening. If you hear something that stands out you can make comments in the comment section below.

 

 

All comments are time-stamped and can be separated based on which version they refer to. This alone is super helpful but clicking on the comment itself jumps the play head to that time-stamp. This is twice as useful. You can immediately hear whatever the comment is referring to.

This feature is invaluable to collaborators working with a deadline, you can save time with little details like this.

Communication is important in collaboration and Bounce Boss makes it a breeze. Every new comment will send an email to the team members unless that team member has seen the comment on the website. No more barrage of email notifications.

To the right of the comment box is the collaborators’ section.

 

 

There you can see your collaborators’ activity, and add more people to the team. If you’re working with multiple people with various roles, you can control who can access what. You can choose who can:

• Download Files
• Upload Files
• Add New Comments
• Access High-Quality Playback
• Add / Remove collaborators (Collaborators can’t remove the owner)
• Edit the project details (deadline / distribution / mix notes etc)

To access permissions click Project Details > Collaborators > Edit (pencil icon). You can then tick/untick whatever permissions suit the circumstances of your project. This comes in handy when working with teams, you don’t want everyone to be able to upload different versions of your song.

Pricing

The pricing for Bounce Boss is subscription based. They offer three different plans based on how much storage you need for uploading data to their cloud. The options are pictured below.

 

Subscription-based models are all the rage right now, and it makes sense with a service that stores your data for you. The storage plan best for you will depend on how busy you are with your business, and hopefully, you are very busy.

This service seems best suited for professionals working in the audio industry in the more traditional studio side of things. This service seems an unlikely match for bedroom producers and the like. The logic would seem that if you are in a position to utilize this service that you’ll want for the Studio Plan at the very least. If you’re a larger team working with larger projects then the Professional plan starts to make sense.

Conclusion

Bounce Boss is an audio-project collaboration website. The service claims it will enhance your workflow by allowing users to up/download files, comment on them, and provide high-quality playback via the cloud. We gave it a test run and found it incredibly easy to use. Upload was quick, but consistency will depend also on your internet speeds.

Once uploaded, it was a breeze to invite team members and communicate with them. Bounce Boss makes it supremely easy to invite collaborators to your project and have them immediately start contributing. Keyboard shortcuts, time-stamped comments, and click-and-drag looping all enhance the experience.

If you think this is a good fit we highly recommend using the free trial period and testing it out. Until then, watch the video below to see it in action and click here to visit the website.

 

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Whether or not you are already working in the music industry it is never too late to improve your production skills. Check out our course catalog today.

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