Managing your Ableton projects by hand
You can organize Ableton projects by hand, with no app at all: keep every project inside one folder, name each one with a date and a title, run File → Collect All and Save so a set's samples stay with it, and keep a spreadsheet with a row per track for BPM, key, status and notes. That is the whole system, it costs nothing but the minutes you spend typing rows, and for twenty or thirty projects it works fine. Here is where it stops paying, so you can tell when handing the bookkeeping to software is worth it.
Why each part is there
A date-first name (6.13.26 Neon Drive) keeps the folder sorted chronologically and tells you what a project is without opening it. Collect All and Save copies the audio a set references into its own project folder, so moving the folder, backing it up or handing it over cannot break it. The spreadsheet is there because a folder listing gives you a name and a date and nothing else.
Where it breaks down
The spreadsheet rots. Every new track is another row to fill in by hand, and the
day you skip it is the day the sheet stops being trustworthy. BPM is already inside every
.als file (and the key too, in Live 12 sets), but the only way to get them into your sheet is to open each project and
copy them across.
You can't hear anything. A project file holds no audio, so "which of these is the good one?" means opening projects one at a time, or digging through an exports folder trying to match bounces to projects by name.
Missing samples surprise you. A spreadsheet can't tell you a project's samples have wandered off. You find out when you open it in six months and Live reports them missing.
Side by side
| Saltado Sessions | Folders + a spreadsheet | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free, or $44 one-time for Pro | Free (your time) |
| Setup | Auto-scans your drives | Type every row by hand |
| BPM & key | Read from the file automatically | Open each project, copy by hand |
| Stays in sync as you work | Rescans, always current | Only if you update the sheet every time |
| Missing-sample warnings | Flagged before you open | You find out when Live can't load |
| Play a track | Bounce preview in the app | Dig through folders |
| Track label submissions | Built in | Yet another spreadsheet |
When to keep it manual, and when to stop
If you've got a handful of projects and you genuinely enjoy keeping a spreadsheet, there's nothing wrong with it, keep going. The moment it's worth switching is when the admin outweighs the making: when you can't remember what half your projects are, when the sheet is out of date, or when you've lost samples you can't get back. That's the point a tool pays for itself.
Saltado Sessions does the bookkeeping for you. It scans every Ableton project on your computer, reads BPM and key from the files, plays your bounces, and flags projects with missing samples, no spreadsheet required. Free for unlimited projects.