A setlist starts as a working document. It gets taped to the stage, handed to the monitor engineer and the lighting desk, and it decides what everyone on the crew does for the next hour.
Who uses it
- The artist, taped by the pedalboard or on the drum riser.
- The monitor engineer, prepping the next song's mix.
- The lighting designer, running cues against it.
- The front of house engineer, who knows what is loud and what is quiet.
Print more copies than you think you need, in type big enough to read in the dark.
After the show
The setlist is also a document that pays. Collecting societies distribute live royalties on what was reported as performed, and their forms ask for titles, writers and durations. A DJ set is harder: societies accept a track list, but many DJs never file one, so that money is shared out on other data.
Keep it
Photograph the taped copy before load-out. Once the stage is stripped it is the only record of what happened.