About Fretlist
Fretlist is a song and setlist manager for musicians. It started in January 2026 as a side project and is now used by over a hundred working musicians, teachers, and home players around the world.
Who's behind it
Fretlist is built by Dirk-Jan Smit — a singer-songwriter and frontend developer based in the Netherlands. I perform under the name Dear John, often as a duo with my friend Ruud. I've been gigging for fifteen years on a Cordoba GK Pro Negra, tuned half a step down. Most of the design choices in Fretlist trace back to that — what I wished existed when I was juggling chord sheets at a soundcheck.
I build Fretlist alone. There is no team, no investors, no marketing department. Every email, every bug fix, every feature decision goes through me. That is part of why it stays simple.
Why I'm building it
I started Fretlist because I love building things and I was curious whether I could make something better than what I was using. That's the honest answer. There's no dramatic origin story.
What kept me going was the response from real musicians. Geoff from Ireland uses it on stage with four bands. Tony runs a men's-shed jam from it. Lisa brought 800 songs across from SongbookPro. Nate brought 4,000 ukulele songs in a single import. Alan runs two bands from it. They told me what worked, what didn't, and what they actually needed — and Fretlist is shaped by those conversations more than by any plan I made up front.
What Fretlist is
A web app, not a native app. It runs in any modern browser on any device — phone, tablet, laptop, Linux box. It works offline as a Progressive Web App, so a venue with bad WiFi is not a problem. It reads ChordPro, OnSong, SongbookPro, PDF, Word, and plain text. It exports back out to all of those formats. Your music is never locked in.
The product I am trying to build is the one that gets out of your way. The compliment I value most came from Geoff: “It's so straightforward, it's easy to learn for an old man. I'm 60.” That's the bar.
What Fretlist isn't
It is not a chord-chart search engine for copyrighted songs. It is not a social network. It is not a marketplace. It is not trying to replace your DAW, your tuner, or your teacher. There is no AI generating songs for you.
It's a clean home for the music you already work on.
How it's funded
Fretlist is free during Early Access. Paid plans launch in mid-2026. Early Access users get a permanent discount when paid plans go live. There is no free tier after that, and there are no ads. The whole thing is funded by people paying a small monthly fee for software that does what they need.
Get in touch
If you have feedback, found a bug, or just want to say hello, email me at hello@mail.fretlist.com or find me on Threads. I read everything.
— Dirk-Jan