What’s new on OpenRealb: October 2026 Product update

It has been a busy few weeks on OpenRealb. The site keeps growing, more of you play from it every day, and we have been able to ship a lot: setlists, comments and some changes to the e-mails we send you. Here is the tour!

Setlists

Setlists let you choose the tunes for a gig, choose their keys and put them in the order you will play them. You find them in the new Setlists tab of My account.

You can share a set with your bandmates by e-mail or with a link, and update it whenever the plan changes. When it's time to play, you can download it as a PDF.

Make a setlist (you need an account, it takes a minute)

Comments

Music is a joyful thing that is meant to be shared. That is the first idea behind comments, and it pleases us to build this place to share experience, help each other and build a community of musicians around the charts.

Every published chart now has a comment section, in the Comments tool of the chart page. Ask your questions about a chord, suggest a substitution you like, or share a recording everyone should hear, right next to the music.

Some features:

• You can reference bars. Type @27, @5-8 or @B3 in your message, or click the bars directly on the chart, and your comment attaches to them. For everyone reading, the bars light up on the chart when they hover the reference.
• Comments are translated using AI into the seven languages of the site: you write in yours, everyone reads in theirs.
• You can react to comments: thanks, helpful, agree, nice. If needed you can report them.
• We screen the messages using an automated system, that flags spam and unwanted messages.
• You get notifications when someone replies (if you activated notifications)

Open a chart and say hello under your favorite standard.

Our communication

From now on, we'll send three kinds of e-mails. You can pick the ones you want in My account, and change your mind any time.

• The recap (coming soon): your practice, looking back at you. The sessions you played, the tunes you learned, how far you have come. Subscribe now and you will get the first one.
• The news: what’s new on OpenRealb. You are currently reading it.
• Tips: about once a month, tips to learn tunes faster and practice smarter, in-depth articles about music learning

Choose your e-mails.

A word about the ads

You may have noticed a few ads on the site lately. We want to be straight about it.

OpenRealb is free, and it will stay free. No paywall, no premium tier for the charts, the metronome, the editor or the setlists. But the site has grown: more charts, more images rendered, more pages served every day, and now comments, e-mails and notifications. All of that runs on servers, and the hosting bill is no longer zero.

To cover it, ads are the least bad option we found. We'd like to keep them discreet and we would rather not have them at all, but here they are.

This is exactly the kind of thing the new comment section is for: tell us what you think of it, below this post. Would you prefer a “support OpenRealb” option instead? Fewer ads in exchange for a contribution to the site: improving a chart, sending or reviewing a contribution, answering another musician’s question? Please, share your thoughts and reactions with us.

Last but not least: The Blog

This is the very first post on the OpenRealb blog. We will use it to share our product updates, articles about music, and anything else we think musicians will enjoy.

Now it’s your turn: what should we build next? Tell us in the comments below. This blog is only getting started, and we would love to write the next chapters with you.