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SongTimestamps.com

Turn Ableton locators into a timestamped tracklist

Convert the named locators in your Ableton Live .als project into song-start timestamps and a tracklist for your DJ mix or music compilation.

Drop the .als here and the locators come back as a tracklist you can paste into a description box.

Drop your project or session file here

Ableton .als, FL Studio .flp, rekordbox .cue, Traktor .nml or Serato .session.

Your file is read in this browser tab. Nothing is uploaded anywhere.

No file to hand?

Run a real mix through it and see exactly what comes out. A twelve-track recording running an hour and a quarter.

Or a sample from:

On your phone?

Your project file is probably on another computer. Send yourself the link and pick this up there.

What you get back

A list ready to paste into a YouTube, SoundCloud or Mixcloud description.

0:00 Kestrel Lane - First Light
6:12 Ardent Fields - Paper Harbour
13:15 Nomi Vale - Slow Transit
19:48 The Quiet Wire - Understory

Step by step

  1. 1Open the project holding your mix in the Arrangement view.
  2. 2Put the playhead at each transition and press the Set button in the Locators panel, or use the marker row above the timeline.
  3. 3Give each locator the name you want in the tracklist — artist and title work well.
  4. 4Save the set, then drop the .als file here.

Why the tempo matters more than you would expect

Live does not store a locator at a number of seconds. It stores it at a number of beats. That is the right decision for a music program and an inconvenient one here, because turning beats back into minutes and seconds needs the tempo — and if the project tempo does not match the audio you actually bounced, every timestamp in the list is stretched by the same ratio.

This is the single most common reason an Ableton tracklist comes out wrong, and it has a recognisable signature: the times are not randomly off, they drift further out the longer the mix runs.

If you rode the tempo across the set, the automation is followed rather than ignored, so a mix that speeds up over an hour still produces correct times. There is a note on the results telling you when that happened.

You do not need to bounce and re-import

A common assumption is that you have to export the mix, import the audio back into a fresh project, and mark that up. You do not. Upload the original project file and the locators are read straight out of it, whether you assembled the mix in Live or dropped a finished recording onto a track and annotated it.

Naming locators so the tracklist reads well

Whatever you type as the locator name is what appears in the list, so the format is up to you. Artist followed by title is the convention most listeners expect, and it is what reads best in a YouTube description.

Unnamed locators are kept rather than dropped, because the timing is still worth having. They come through as placeholder entries you can fill in on the results page without going back to Live.

Questions

Does it work with Ableton Live Lite and Intro?
Yes. Locators exist in every edition of Live, and the project file format is the same, so a set saved from Lite or Intro reads exactly like one saved from Suite.
What if the tempo changes during my mix?
This page follows your tempo automation across the whole arrangement instead of assuming one fixed tempo, so the times stay correct through a set that speeds up or slows down. The results panel tells you when it did that.
Do I need to upload the audio as well?
No, but it helps. Add the mix audio and the timestamps are checked against its real length, which catches a wrong project tempo immediately. You can also play any entry to hear whether the transition really lands there.

Using something else?

Ableton locators

What locators do in Ableton Live and how to place them

Open

FL Studio

Turn FL Studio time markers into a timestamped tracklist

Open

YouTube chapters

Make YouTube chapters for a DJ mix

Open

There is also a full tutorial covering all five programs and what to do when the times look wrong.