Importer

Move your band's data from BandHelper into nGage. The importer reads a BandHelper JSON export and creates songs, set lists, contacts and events for the current band.

Who can use it

Only the band owner (or a platform admin) can import. You reach the importer from Band settings → Import data.

What gets imported

BandHelper	nGage
Songs	Songs (with lyrics and tags)
Set lists	Set lists (with songs and breaks)
Contacts	Relations (contacts)
Events – category "Show"	Gigs
Events – category "Rehearsal"	Rehearsals

Notes:

Lyrics are imported and the inline chord markers (such as [E], [A]) are kept. They are stored as the song's lyrics note.
Artist is not imported.
Contacts are mapped by category: Venue → venue, Booker → booker, Festival → festival. Anything else (Performer, Tech, Business, Press, …) becomes the catch‑all type Other.
Events are split by category: "Show" becomes a gig, "Rehearsal" becomes a rehearsal. Other categories (e.g. "Vacation") are skipped and listed in the report.

Choose a source first

Open Band settings and click Import data. The importer opens a source chooser where you first pick where your data comes from:

Import from BandHelper — a BandHelper JSON export (songs, set lists, contacts and events).
Import from CSV — a spreadsheet of songs.
Copy-Paste list — a quick pasted list of songs.

Pick a source and the matching input screen opens.

Import from BandHelper

On the chooser, click Import from BandHelper.
Choose your BandHelper export .json file and click Analyze.
Review the preview. Nothing is saved yet. For each type you see how many records were found, how many will be imported, and which are skipped and why.
Click Confirm import to write the data, or Cancel to discard.

Quick-import songs (Copy-Paste list or CSV)

No BandHelper export? Add a repertoire fast from the Copy-Paste list or Import from CSV source on the chooser.

Copy-Paste list — paste one song per line as Title - Artist (a dash, en/em dash, tab or semicolon all work as the separator). No artist? Just type the title and the artist is left empty.
Import from CSV — upload a .csv with a title column and, optionally, artist, key, BPM and duration. A header row is detected automatically; without a header the first column is the title and the second the artist.

Each line is looked up in open music databases (MusicBrainz, and — when configured — GetSongBPM for tempo/key and Discogs for genre). When there is a confident match, the song's tempo, key, genre, duration and cover art are filled in for you; values you typed yourself are kept. The artist is never guessed: it is only ever the artist you typed, so a line without an artist stays without one. Lines we cannot match are still added with just the title and artist you provided, and listed in the preview so you know which ones to complete by hand.

Like the BandHelper import, you get a preview first and nothing is saved until you press Confirm import. Songs with a title that already exists are skipped.

When tempo/key came from GetSongBPM, a small getsongbpm.com credit is shown — this attribution is required by GetSongBPM.

What is skipped (and never overwritten)

To keep re‑imports safe, an existing record with the same name is skipped:

Songs – same title.
Contacts – same name (and email when present).
Set lists – same name.
Events – same name and date.

Records are also skipped when:

a required field is missing (e.g. a song without a title, an event without a date);
your package limit for that type is reached;
the target module (Songs, Set Lists, Relations, Gigs or Rehearsals) is not installed;
an event's category does not map to gigs or rehearsals.

The import never overwrites or duplicates existing records. You can safely run the same file again — only new records are added.

Limits

The importer respects the same package limits as creating records by hand. When a limit is reached, the remaining records of that type are skipped and shown in the report.

The same module also lets you export data as a structured JSON file, so you have a portable copy you can keep or move to another service. You reach it from Band settings → Export data.

Two exports are available:

Band data (band owner only) — a complete backup of the band: profile, members (with roles and instruments), contacts, songs (with notes/lyrics and file information), set lists, gigs and rehearsals.
My personal data (any logged‑in member) — your own personal data only: your account details, profile, preferences and the bands you belong to (with your role). This covers the GDPR right of access (Art. 15) and right to data portability (Art. 20).

How to export:

Open Band settings and click Export data.
Click Download band data (JSON) or Download my data (JSON).
Your browser downloads a .json file (ngage-band-…json or ngage-personal-data-…json).