Editor's Review
A real studio on a phone:
Most mobile music apps are toys with a record button attached. BandLab is closer to an actual multitrack workstation: unlimited tracks, a mixer with per-channel effects, virtual instruments, a drum machine, a looper, MIDI editing and support for external interfaces so a guitar or a proper microphone can be plugged in. Projects save to the cloud rather than to storage, which means a phone, a tablet and a browser can all open the same session.
The catch that is not one:
All of that costs nothing, with no track limit and no watermark on exports, which is unusual enough that people assume something is hidden. The business runs on the platform around the studio - BandLab is also a network where musicians publish tracks and other users fork and remix them - and on hardware and adjacent services. The automatic mastering tool is free with a cap on how many masters you can run in a given period.
What it asks of you:
The ceiling is high enough that the learning curve is real. Anyone who has never opened a DAW will spend a while working out routing, bussing and why a take sounds thin. Mixing on a phone screen is genuinely hard, too - fine automation and precise edits want a tablet at minimum. Because projects live in the cloud, an account is compulsory from first launch and working offline is limited.
For songwriters sketching ideas, producers without money for desktop software, and anyone who wants a collaborator to open their session and add a part, nothing else on Android offers this much for nothing.
Features
Unlimited multitrack recording with a per-channel mixer and effects chain
Virtual instruments, a drum machine and a large royalty-free loop library
MIDI editing plus support for external audio interfaces and USB microphones
Automatic mastering applied to a finished mix
Cloud projects that open on a phone, a tablet or in a browser
Forking, where another user opens your track and builds on it
Social feed for publishing tracks and finding collaborators
Pros
Genuinely free multitrack recording with no track cap and no export watermark
Cloud projects make moving between devices painless
Collaboration and remixing are built into the platform rather than bolted on
The loop and instrument library is deep enough to build a track from nothing
Accepts external interfaces, so it is not stuck with the phone microphone
Cons
Steep learning curve for anyone new to multitrack recording
Detailed mixing and editing are awkward on a phone-sized screen
An account and a connection are required; sessions live in the cloud, not on the device
