How MELD works

Play live with somebody, record a take, master it to the loudness the streaming services play at, and post what you made. Four parts, all of them in the browser — and the whole first pass costs nothing and needs no account. A jam feeds the studio, the studio feeds the master, and the master is what you post.

STEP ONE

Play with somebody

MELD Jam puts you in a room with another musician, live, in the browser. Pick what you play and what you are looking for, or send somebody a link and jam with them in a private room instead. Audio comes first the whole way, and the room tells you the real delay between you rather than hiding it.

It records while you play. Your own microphone only — unless you both switch on Record both of us before you meet, which puts you in a room with only other people who did. When the three minutes are up you choose: Post it to MELD, Save to my library, Send to MELD Studio, Download it or Discard. A take that goes to the Studio can then be mastered and posted like any other.

It needs somebody on the other end — so send a friend the link rather than waiting on the lobby. Too far apart to play in time? The room says so and offers a delay jam: you hear each other one bar late, exactly on the beat. No account, no key.

Open MELD Jam →

STEP TWO

Record it

MELD Studio records straight from your microphone — press Record, play, press it again. You watch the waveform build as it goes, and what you get out is the samples that came off the mic, not a compressed copy. Nothing is installed and nothing is uploaded.

When you stop, three buttons: Add to the timeline, Export WAV and Send to MELD Master. Signed out you can record, trim, fade and normalise a take and export it. The timeline — takes on lanes you move and trim, the Mixer, and an EQ you drag by its curve while it plays — is the Artist plan, and the Create drawer’s instruments are Pro. Ctrl‑Z on the timeline goes back sixty steps.

In a hurry to hear it? Press Load the demo song and four tracks appear, built in your browser, before you record anything at all.

Open MELD Studio →

STEP THREE

Master it

MELD Master measures your track, then you pick a target — Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcasts or YouTube, or a figure of your own — and press Render this track. That is the difference between a mix that sounds thin next to everything else and one that sits where it should.

Then Original and Mastered, back to back at matched loudness, so you are judging the work rather than the volume. Download WAV and it is yours; Post it and it goes to MELD Social. Nothing else is uploaded: the measuring, the mastering and the download all happen on your own machine.

Already have the track? Skip straight here with any WAV, FLAC, MP3 or AIFF.

Open MELD Master →

STEP FOUR

Post it

Download the mastered WAV and it is yours, with nothing owed. Or post it to MELD Social, where other musicians find you, connect with you, message you, and can like, comment on and repost what you made — and where the next jam usually starts.

Posting is the one step that needs a free account, and the one place a recording leaves your machine: it is uploaded so that other people can press play. You decide who can, on every post — everyone, your connections only, or nobody but you — and you can change it afterwards, or delete the post.

An account is an email and a password. No card is asked for at any point.

See MELD Social →

Would rather be shown than read? The walkthrough points at each control as you go, from a recording through to a finished master and a post.

Walk me through it

The things people ask first

Does my audio get uploaded?
Only when you press a button that says so. Jamming, recording and mastering all run on your own machine and never send audio anywhere — a jam goes straight between the two browsers, or through an encrypted relay when a router will not allow that. Posting a track to MELD Social uploads that recording, because otherwise nobody else could play it, and you choose who can. On the Studio plan, Save to cloud and Share by link upload too, on your press.
What does it cost?
Nothing to start. Signed out you get one run through everything; a free account raises every limit and opens everything social. The paid plans are on the plans page, which says what each one opens and whether it is on sale today.
Do I need an account?
Not to jam, record or master — those three are open to anybody. You need one to post a track, to message somebody, to connect with people, and to see the feed.
Do I need a microphone?
For jamming and for recording, yes. Mastering works with a file you already have.
Does the other person's playing get recorded?
Not unless you both chose it. By default a jam captures your own microphone and nothing else. Record both of us is a switch each of you turns on before you are matched, and it only ever puts you with people who turned it on too. Either way we never receive any of it: the recording is made in your browser, and a take recorded with both of you on cannot be posted, because the other person agreed to be recorded, not posted.
Where do my recordings live?
In this browser, which is how a take can move from a jam to the studio to the mastering tool without ever being uploaded. With an account the name and length are kept against you so the list follows you. A track you post is the exception, and the copy on your machine stays exactly as you made it.