Backing Tracks for Singers: The Complete Setup Guide

This is the guide I wish I'd had when I moved from minidiscs to a laptop to a tablet. It covers the whole rig — what to buy, how to set it up, how to get your old tracks onto it, and how to run a gig without it falling over. If you read one page, read this one. If you want to go deep on any part, there's a dedicated guide for each.

The modern rig

The setup most working singers land on is surprisingly simple: one tablet, a clamp mount on your mic stand, and a pair of in-ear monitors or the venue's PA. That's it. No laptop on a music stand, no CD player under the table, no minidisc deck balanced on a bar stool. The tablet holds everything, plays everything, and sits at eye level so you never look down mid-song.

Choosing your tablet

You don't need the newest or the biggest. Any tablet from the last five years will do — iPad or Android. Two things matter: screen size and storage. A 10-inch screen is the sweet spot — big enough to read track names at a glance, small enough to sit on a mic stand without wobbling. On storage, 64GB is plenty for a library of MP3 backing tracks (they're tiny). If you run video karaoke (MP4s), aim for 128GB to give yourself headroom. Refurbished is fine. This is a work tool, not a fashion statement.

The mic-stand mount

A tablet clamp that bolts onto your mic stand is the single best upgrade you can make. It puts the screen at eye level, angled towards you, so you can see the next track, read the lyrics, and tap play without breaking eye contact with the room. They cost about £15–25 online. Get one with a ball joint so you can angle it. Your tablet now lives where your music used to — at the right height, always in view.

Storage: doing the maths

An MP3 backing track is roughly 3–5MB. A 64GB tablet, after the operating system, has about 50GB free. That's over 10,000 tracks. You will never have 10,000 tracks. An MP4 video karaoke track is about 30–50MB, so the same tablet holds around 1,000 of those. Unless you're running a karaoke night seven nights a week, storage is not a problem. Buy the cheap model.

Converting your old library

If you're coming from minidisc, CD, or cassette, you'll need to digitise your tracks first. It's a one-evening job with free software. The full step-by-step — cables, Audacity, levels, export — is in the dedicated guide: How to Convert Your Minidiscs to MP3. Once they're MP3s, they go straight onto the tablet.

Organising your tracks

A library you can't search is a library you can't use on stage. The system that works: proper filenames (artist first), genre tags with colours, and saved setlists per gig type. The full method is here: How to Organise Your Backing Tracks. Do it once and it stays done.

Gigging without wifi

Venue wifi will let you down. The only safe setup is every track stored on the device, playing from local storage, no internet needed. Yourtracks is built exactly this way. The full reasoning — and what cloud backup really does (it backs up your library info, not the audio files) — is here: How to Run Backing Tracks at a Gig Without WiFi.

Getting it on your tablet

You don't need an app store. Yourtracks installs to your home screen in about ten seconds, full screen, no browser bar. The walkthrough for iPad and Android is here: How to Put Karaoke Tracks on a Tablet.

The complete checklist

• Tablet (10-inch, 64GB minimum) ✓
• Mic-stand clamp mount ✓
• Tracks digitised to MP3 (or MP4 for video) ✓
• Library organised: filenames, genre tags, setlists ✓
• All tracks stored on the device, not streaming ✓
• Player installed to home screen ✓
• Charger in your gig bag ✓
• Cloud backup turned on (for recovery, not streaming) ✓

Run through that list and you've got a rig that won't fail you. You turn up, mount the tablet, tap play. The show runs itself.