What Makes Kora Different From Other Music Tools?

Direct answer: Most tools you would compare Kora to are general databases or file storage with music words typed into them. Kora encodes music work as fixed structure — 19 contact roles, 7 mix types, 14 required metadata fields, 19 filename tokens — and reacts to filesystem events, linking a new bounce to a project in roughly 1.34–3.1 seconds.

What is each tool actually designed to model?

The useful question is not which tool has more features. It is what each one was built to represent.

Notion, Airtable, Trello and Asana are general-purpose databases and task tools. They model rows, cards and fields you define yourself. They have no built-in concept of an audio file, a stem, a mix type, a key or a BPM, and no filesystem awareness — a file exists in them because a person uploaded it.

Dropbox and Google Drive are storage and sync. They version files. They do not model a deliverable, a required-metadata spec, or an approval state; a folder of WAVs and a folder of invoices are the same shape to them.

DISCO is genuinely music-aware — a cloud-hosted catalogue and pitching platform, oriented around sending and tracking listening links. It is the closest thing here to a music-native system, and it solves a different problem from the one Kora solves.

Splice is a sample and collaboration service, not a workflow tool, and not a Kora integration: the only mention of it in Kora’s code is a rule to skip folders named “Splice” when scanning.

Which structures are fixed in Kora and free-text everywhere else?

Every value below is an enumerated list inside Kora, not a field a user invents. That is the whole structural difference in one table.

What the software models	Kora	General databases (Notion, Airtable)	Cloud storage (Dropbox, Drive)
Contact role	20 enumerated roles — Publisher, Library, Music Library, Sync Agent, Label, Supervisor, A&R, Playlist Curator, and 12 more	a column you define and maintain	not modelled
Relationship tier	5 fixed tiers: Dream · High Priority · Active · Warm · Dormant	a column you define	not modelled
Pipeline status	8 statuses, including Expects Deliverables and Signing Contracts	a column you define	not modelled
Payment model	4: Per Track · Per Project · Per Album · Revenue Share	a column you define	not modelled
Deliverable type	7-item checklist: Full Mix, Alt Mix, Instrumental, No Drums, TV Mix, Stems, Other	no concept of a mix type	no concept of a mix type
Required metadata	14-field checklist, incl. PRO/Copyright, ISRC, UPC, Mood, Keywords	a column you define	not modelled
Filename structure	19 template tokens plus `{mixTypeFolder}` — `{key}`, `{bpm}`, `{isrc}`, `{mixType}` among them	no filename semantics	filename is opaque text
Contact slots on a project	6 typed slots: publisher, label, artist, collaborator, client, primary	free relations	not modelled
DAW awareness	19-DAW registry, filename interop and launcher	none	none
A new file appears on disk	FSEvents pipeline links it: ≈1.34 s for a DAW file, ≈2.4–3.1 s for an export	nothing happens until a human uploads it	the file syncs; nothing is linked to it

To be exact about the last row: Kora’s DAW registry works by filename only. It never opens or parses a project file.

Why does watching the filesystem change what software can do?

A database cannot act on a filesystem event at any price, because it is not on your filesystem. Kora is a macOS desktop app watching FSEvents, so the sequence after you hit bounce runs without anyone touching a browser: a 1200 ms debounce on balanced (500 ms on live), a 2500 ms dedup window, a 1500 ms export-stability gate sampled at 250 ms, then a 140 ms batch flush.

The link is scored, not guessed. Project-name similarity carries a ×0.55 multiplier and path-token overlap ×0.25; a match against the project’s own DAW filename adds +0.20 but only above 0.85, an album name in the path adds +0.10, and recency adds +0.15 / +0.12 / +0.08 / +0.04 for files modified within 2, 7, 30 or 90 days. Anything at or above 0.55 links; 0.88 or higher counts as an exact duplicate, and the review queue auto-links only when exactly one candidate clears it. A 41-entry path-noise list stops generic folder names — users, documents, exports, icloud, ableton, logic — inflating the match. A background reconcile runs every 4 hours and on launch.

Where a different tool is the better choice

You are not on macOS. Kora is macOS 13+ only, Apple Silicon or Intel. There is no web app, no Windows and no Android build. Kora for iPhone is in development with no announced date.
You need a shared cloud catalogue and listening links. That is DISCO’s shape, not Kora’s. Kora’s review links are Pro-only and blocked in practice, since they require a version record that only the disabled export path can produce.
You need multi-user live editing. Kora’s whiteboards are presence-only; remote edits do not merge.
You need audio processing on export. Export Flow’s audio engine is disabled in shipping builds — no format conversion, loudness analysis, metadata embedding or MP3 rendering. Delivery profiles, naming templates, checklists and preflight work today; the processing does not.
You need version history. It does not exist. A deliverable file records name, path, size, hash and mix type — no version number, no per-file revision date.

Frequently asked

Could I just build this in Notion or Airtable?

You can model contacts, albums and tasks in either. What you cannot build is the part that runs without you: a database has no view of your disk, so a bounce becomes a record only when a person uploads it and types the metadata. The enums also stop being enums — every role, tier and mix type becomes a value you keep consistent by hand.

Does Kora replace Dropbox or Google Drive?

No. Both are built as native-API integrations — Dropbox uploads non-destructively and returns a share link, Drive uses multipart upload — but both are unreachable today, because each needs a version record that only the disabled export path produces.

Is Kora an alternative to DISCO?

Not a like-for-like one. DISCO is cloud-hosted and organised around catalogue and pitching. Kora is a local macOS app organised around what happens between the DAW and the delivery — watch folders, naming, checklists, follow-ups and focus sessions.

Does Kora work over a NAS or network volume?

No. Watch folders have no mount-state detection, so network volumes and NAS shares are not supported. iCloud is handled explicitly (canonical path plus alias). Renamed folders are not tracked by rename; they surface through a 7-day stale check.

What Makes Kora Different From Other Music Tools?