Playlists & share links

The player#

Press play on any song and the player at the bottom of the screen takes over. It keeps playing while you move around Catalyst and remembers where you left off next time. The queue is the list you pressed play in. Scrub with the waveform, and use Space to play or pause, ← and → to skip 5 seconds, [ and ] for previous and next, and s to shuffle.

Shuffle keeps the current song playing and plays the rest of the queue in random order; turn it off and the original order comes back.

Playlists#

A playlist holds versions, not just songs, so the A&R hears the master you meant rather than whichever recording happens to be primary.

• Create one from Playlists (g then p) with New playlist…, or select songs in the Library and choose Add to playlist.
• Add a specific recording from a song's Versions tab.
• Turn a Library view into a playlist with Save as playlist: a snapshot of up to 500 songs in the view's order.
• Reorder by dragging tracks (on a computer). Duplicate or delete a playlist from its ⋯ menu.
• Organise playlists into folders from the Playlists page.

Create a share link#

A share link opens a clean listening page for one song or a whole playlist. Recipients don't need an account. Create one with Share on a playlist, on a version, or on any row in the Library.

1. 1Step 1: Choose Share.
2. 2Step 2: Optionally give the link a Label only your team sees, such as “Sony A&R”, so you know which link went where.
3. 3Step 3: Choose when it Expires: 7, 30 (the default) or 90 days, or never.
4. 4Step 4: Decide whether to Allow downloading the original files (off by default) and whether to Show writer names.
5. 5Step 5: Choose Create link and copy it. On a phone you can send it straight from your share sheet.

The page takes its colour from the artwork. Recipients can Play all, shuffle, and scrub the waveform, and the player stays at the bottom of the screen on phones. Each track has its own Share button: it passes on that one song under the same link, so your expiry, download setting and revoking still apply to it.

Each link is independent. Make as many as you like for the same playlist (one per A&R, say), each with its own expiry and settings. Revoke a link at any time and it stops working immediately; expired and revoked links stay listed, dimmed, so you remember what you sent.

A playlist link always plays the playlist as it is now, so changes you make after sending show up for the recipient.

Views, plays and downloads#

Each link in the share dialog shows how many times it was opened, played and downloaded, and when it was last opened. The Dashboard's Share activity pane rolls them up across links.

View

Someone opened the page in a browser. Link previews in Slack, iMessage, WhatsApp and the like don't count.

Play

Someone listened for at least 30 seconds (or half of a track shorter than a minute).

Download

Someone downloaded a file (only possible when downloads are allowed).

Repeats from the same browser tab within 30 minutes count once. Counts are per link, never per person: Catalyst doesn't record who the recipient is, their IP address or their location. If you need to know which A&R listened, give each one their own link.