What Is Kora for Music Creators?

Direct answer: Kora is Soniteq’s Mac-first project lifecycle management for music professionals. It manages albums, projects, deliverables, contacts, and focus sessions outside the DAW. Kora is not a DAW, not a file manager, and not a generic task app. It is a native desktop app for macOS 13 or later, carrying 20 modules that sit either side of the session itself.

What do you actually get when you install it?

One installer, one app — Apple Silicon or Intel, macOS 13 or later. There is no web app, no Windows build and no Android build. Kora for iPhone is in development and is not on the App Store; there is no date. Your data lives in a SQLite file at ~/Library/Application Support/com.kora.app/kora.db.

The app carries 20 modules, and you do not meet all of them on day one. The seven-screen First-Launch Setup wizard asks whether you want a Basic or an Advanced workspace; only Advanced switches on all 20, with the longer walkthrough — 25 tips instead of 9. The wizard itself runs about five minutes, though a realistic first session is 15–20 minutes once you include the download, the magic-link account, Full Disk Access and the first scan of your existing exports and DAW projects.

Breadth is not the point of the module count. Each module owns a structure the DAW has no opinion about — an album, a client, a delivery spec, a follow-up date — and they read from one store, so a contact who has gone overdue can raise the priority of the album that contact is waiting on.

The module surface, in numbers

Module	What it actually contains	Gated by plan?
Watch Folders	0.55 link threshold, 0.88 exact-duplicate threshold, 42-entry path-noise list, background reconcile every 4 hours	No
Export Flow	4 built-in delivery profiles, 19 filename tokens plus `{mixTypeFolder}`, 7 deliverable types, 14 required-metadata fields, 6 accepted input formats	No
Key Shift Pro	±6 semitones, WAV/AIFF in and WAV out, 16/24/32-bit	No
Focus Flow	5 timing methods, 5 block schedules (25/5, 45/15, 60/10), custom 1–240 minutes	No
Contacts	19 roles, 5 tiers, 8 statuses, an 8-rule follow-up ladder, 6 typed contact slots per project or album	Finance import and agreements: Creator and above
Whiteboards	30 block types, 26 templates, 60-command slash palette	No
Kai	44 enumerated actions, all organisational	Yes — 0 / 1,000 / 2,000 chat turns a month, enforced server-side
Review links	Shareable approval links	Yes — Pro only; the server returns 403 below it
Conversation retention	Stored chat threads	Yes — 8 / 24 / 64 threads

Two things worth reading off that table. Export Flow and Key Shift Pro are not plan features — they are present on every tier, including Local at $7. And cloud sync is not a plan feature either: it is opt-in, off by default everywhere, and the only gate on it is whether you are signed in.

What does Kora replace, and what stays in your stack?

Kora absorbs the improvised layer most creators assemble around the DAW — the spreadsheet of active tracks, the note holding each client’s naming convention, the delivery discipline carried in your head, the calendar reminder to chase an approval. Those become project and album records, per-contact delivery profiles, naming templates with live preview, and the follow-up ladder.

What it does not replace, plainly:

Your DAW. A 19-DAW registry, interop by filename only, plus a launcher. Kora never opens or parses a project file.
Your storage. Dropbox and Google Drive still hold and version files. Kora models the deliverable — the spec, the checklist, the destination.
Version history for audio. There is none. DeliverableFile stores {fileName, outPath, sizeBytes?, sha256?, mixType?} — no version number, no revision index, no per-file date.
A catalogue and pitching platform. DISCO is built around sending and tracking listening links, which is a different job.

Which parts of the surface are switched off today?

Export Flow’s audio-processing engine is disabled in shipping builds. No format conversion, no loudness analysis, no metadata embedding, no MP3 rendering. Naming, folder recipes, checklists and full preflight all work.
The Deliverable Ledger stays empty on a fresh install, because the only thing that writes a version record is that disabled export path.
Review links are doubly blocked — they need a version record and MP3 normalisation, so Pro’s review links sit behind the same wall.
Dropbox and Google Drive upload are fully built but unreachable for the same reason.
Whiteboards are single-user. Presence works; inbound remote edits do not.
Logged interactions are not persisted. They live in component state and are lost on reload, so Kora does not hold a relationship history.

Better you read that list here than discover it in week two.

Frequently asked

Do I have to use all 20 modules?

No. Basic workspace shows a reduced surface with a 9-tip walkthrough; Advanced turns on all 20 with 25 tips. The wizard’s own copy is “No wrong choice — you can switch anytime in Settings.”

What does the $7 Local plan actually lose?

Kai’s chat turns and advanced reasoning are both 0, AI actions cap at 20 a month, replies cap at 620 characters, and thread retention is 8. Review links, entity sharing, finance import and agreements, custom automations and public pages are all off. Watch Folders, Export Flow, Key Shift Pro and cloud sync stay.

Does any audio leave my machine?

No. Audio and DAW file bytes, the audio library index, waveform and QC caches, whiteboard media and watch-folder config are never uploaded, on any plan or setting. One caveat: your configured DAW application paths do sync when cloud sync is on — the paths, not the files.

Can I start without a card?

No. The 21-day trial grants full Pro access and one trial per account, but a payment method is required to start it. Nothing is charged until the trial ends, and cancelling before then costs nothing.

What Is Kora for Music Creators?