Amber Beverage and Plant Shadow Still Life
Amber Beverage and Plant Shadow Still Life
Amber Beverage and Plant Shadow Still Life

Problem

Music creators increasingly collaborate across locations, disciplines, and software. Yet most collaboration tools are built around file sharing and live streaming, not workflow sharing.

When working across DAWs, game engines, and real-time media tools, collaboration breaks down due to incompatible project formats across DAWs, fragmented version histories, manual exporting and syncing, and collaborators lacking access to the same tools.

As a result, creative teams spend more time managing files than making music.

Challenge

How can collaborative music workflows be reimagined so creators across tools and locations can work together fluidly, without technical or logistical barriers?

Insight

Through my own collaborative projects, I saw that the core problem was not a lack of tools, but a lack of shared structure. Music projects already contain rich organizational logic: tracks, clips, timing, and relationships, but current collaboration methods flatten this into disconnected files. Without a common representation, collaboration across tools becomes fragile, opaque, and inefficient.

Problem

Music creators increasingly collaborate across locations, disciplines, and software. Yet most collaboration tools are built around file sharing and live streaming, not workflow sharing.

When working across DAWs, game engines, and real-time media tools, collaboration breaks down due to incompatible project formats across DAWs, fragmented version histories, manual exporting and syncing, and collaborators lacking access to the same tools.

As a result, creative teams spend more time managing files than making music.

Challenge

How can collaborative music workflows be reimagined so creators across tools and locations can work together fluidly, without technical or logistical barriers?

Insight

Through my own collaborative projects, I saw that the core problem was not a lack of tools, but a lack of shared structure. Music projects already contain rich organizational logic: tracks, clips, timing, and relationships, but current collaboration methods flatten this into disconnected files. Without a common representation, collaboration across tools becomes fragile, opaque, and inefficient.

Solution

Familiar UI Design for pro users.

ColDAW is designed around interaction patterns that professional DAW users already understand. The interface mirrors established DAW concepts such as tracks, timelines, clips, and project states, allowing creators to navigate, review, and modify projects without learning a new mental model. By preserving familiar user journeys, ColDAW minimizes onboarding friction and keeps creative attention focused on making music rather than learning new tools.

Cross-Tool and Cross-Platform Compatibility.

At its core, ColDAW translates DAW sessions into a unified symbolic project structure that is independent of any single software environment. This abstraction allows creators to collaborate across different digital audio workstations and multimedia tools while maintaining a consistent project state.

Cloud-Based Project Storage.

All project data in ColDAW is stored and managed in the cloud, making collaboration persistent and accessible across locations and time zones. Cloud storage enables clear version history, centralized project organization, and asynchronous collaboration, allowing creators to review and manage projects without requiring local DAW access.

Local–Cloud Synchronization via VST and Web.

To connect local creative work with remote collaboration, ColDAW integrates a lightweight in-DAW VST plugin with a web-based platform. Changes made inside a local DAW are synchronized to the cloud, while updates from collaborators are reflected back into the DAW environment.

ColDAW

ColDAW is a digital studio that makes it easy for music creatives and multimedia collaborators to share, manage, and collaborate on music projects across different software. ColDAW lets collaborators work in parallel across various audio workstations and multimedia software, and automatically keeps everything in sync.

Year

2025

Year

2025

Role

Founder

Role

Founder

Client

This is a self-lead project.

Client

This is a self-lead project.

Timeline

1 month

Timeline

1 month

ColDAW

ColDAW is a digital studio that makes it easy for music creatives and multimedia collaborators to share, manage, and collaborate on music projects across different software. ColDAW lets collaborators work in parallel across various audio workstations and multimedia software, and automatically keeps everything in sync.

Year

2025

Role

Founder

Client

This is a self-lead project.

Timeline

1 month