Reference
Plans, limits and the Suite badge
fMusic comes in three tiers: Intro, Studio and Suite. The tier decides which capabilities are switched on and, on Intro, how many tracks and prints you can work with at once. This page is the single reference for what each tier includes, how a blocked control looks, what the Intro caps are and how they behave, and where fMusic actually applies them. Plans and prices live on the pricing page: the app itself never sells anything.
The three tiers
| Tier | What it is | Rules |
|---|---|---|
| Intro | The free download, with no active plan. It is never a plan you buy. | The same rules as Studio (same capabilities, same internet requirement) plus quantitative caps: 8 tracks in the editor, 1 favorite print, 1 custom print. |
| Studio | Everything fMusic 1 did, in the new interface. | No caps. Needs an internet connection; the queue runs one module at a time. |
| Suite | Studio plus every new capability listed below. | No caps. Works offline; import, organize and export jobs queue together. |
The order is Intro, then Studio, then Suite. Everything that is not in the capability table below is available on every tier: Import, Export, the editor, the queue, the global print shortcuts, and so on.
Suite capabilities
Every gated capability requires Suite. The first column is the name fMusic uses for it; the last column is exactly what Intro and Studio users see in its place.
| Capability | Where it lives | What you see when it is blocked |
|---|---|---|
| Audio normalization | Settings ▸ Import & Organize | The rows Normalize audio, Target level and Measure stay visible, disabled, with a SUITE badge. Imports keep the file’s original level and the editor monitors at unity gain. See Gain staging. |
| Track preset mode | Placement mode picker, Settings ▸ Import & Organize | The entry reads Track preset — Suite and is disabled; the picker refuses the value. See Routing and matching modes. |
| Match template mode | Same picker | The entry reads Match template — Suite and is disabled. |
| Organize (the whole module) | Home, Organize Session section | The section is veiled behind an Upgrade to Suite capsule; opening it anyway lands on the full-screen blocked screen described below. See What is Organize?. |
| Per-print mix source | Print editor, Mix source | The picker is disabled with a badge; the print inherits the project mix source. See Inherit vs override. |
| Markers per print | Print editor, Range Kind | The segment reads Markers — Suite and cannot be selected; Time and Bars|Beats ranges remain available. |
| Per-print audio formats | Print editor, Audio | The Custom audio formats toggle is disabled with a badge; the print uses the project format list. |
| Categories from session elements | Settings ▸ Export, Export mode | The entry reads Folder — Suite and is disabled; Export categories work in Routing mode, one bus per category. |
| Print preview | Prints list, Play button on each row | The button stays on every row, disabled with a badge. See Print preview. |
| Mixed queue | Queue | The queue accepts one module at a time, with a toast when a job from another module is refused (below). |
| Offline use | Whole app | A blocking overlay covers the app while the Mac has no internet connection (below). |
How a blocked control looks
One rule holds everywhere: a blocked control is never hidden. It stays exactly where it belongs, disabled, with a small pill carrying the tier name in capitals, SUITE, and a tooltip built on one pattern: {Capability} — {pitch} Available in fMusic Suite. The pitch is a one-line description of what the capability does for you. You always see what the higher tier would add, in the place where you would use it, without the layout changing between tiers.
In pickers and segmented controls the blocked entry keeps its label and gains the tier name after a dash, for example Track preset — Suite or Markers — Suite. The badge is a state, not a button: the action that takes you to the plans is the Upgrade capsule.
The Organize blocked screen
On Home, the Organize Session section is disabled and dimmed behind a dark veil, with an Ember Upgrade to Suite capsule in the center; the section stays readable underneath, so you can still see its rows. If you open Organize anyway, from a recent session, from Open a Session… or from the Current Session row, nothing is loaded and no session is touched: fMusic shows a full-screen blocked page with the SUITE badge, the title Organize, the pitch, and two buttons, Back (⎋) and See fMusic Suite, which opens the pricing page in your browser. There is no purchase inside the app.
An Organize job that was already waiting in the queue when the tier changed is not turned into an import: it stays in the queue and fails when it runs.
Where the Upgrade capsule leads
The capsule reads Upgrade to Suite for a Suite capability and Upgrade to Studio for an Intro cap, with a sparkle glyph, and grows slightly under the pointer. Wherever it appears, it always opens the same place, https://www.forte-ai.com/pricing, in your default browser. The app holds no prices and no subscription durations, and there is no in-app checkout: plans are bought on the website.
Intro limits
Intro adds three quantitative caps on top of the Studio rules. The tier that removes them is Studio, so their capsules read Upgrade to Studio rather than Suite.
| Limit | Intro | Studio | Suite |
|---|---|---|---|
| Editor tracks (lanes in the editor) | 8 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Favorite prints | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Custom prints (prints of the current session) | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Every limit message follows one form: {Tier} allows {one|N} {limit} — Upgrade to Studio for more. For example: Intro allows one custom print — Upgrade to Studio for more. Each limit also has a one-line pitch that appears next to its capsule:
- Editor tracks: Arrange as many tracks as the session needs — no eight-track ceiling.
- Favorite prints: Keep every print you star, and find it again in every session.
- Custom prints: Build as many custom prints as a delivery needs.
Editor tracks: the locked-lanes shelf
Tracks beyond the eighth are not loaded into the engine, so no audio is decoded for them. They wait on a shelf drawn below the timeline as ghost lanes: up to three blurred rows showing the category color, the track name and a lock, then and {N} more when the shelf holds more than three. To the right, the shelf reads {N} more track(s) locked in Intro, followed by the pitch and the Upgrade to Studio capsule.
- The eight loaded tracks are the first eight in lane order.
- Free a lane (remove a track) and the first waiting track takes its place; the shelf drains in FIFO order. Undoing the removal with
⌘Zdoes not pull a shelved track back in. - If the cap drops while the editor is full, because the tier changed with the wizard open, the last lanes leave the timeline and go to the head of the shelf, and the undo history is cleared.
- The confirmation dialog states it before anything runs: {N} more track(s) is/are locked in Intro and will not be imported. (organized in Organize.)
- A job queued with more tracks than the cap and run under Intro delivers the first eight and drops the rest from the job.
- In Organize a shelved track is never deleted from Pro Tools: it is simply left as it is.
Favorite and custom prints
- Once the custom cap is reached, the dashed Create Custom Print row at the bottom of the prints list is replaced by an upgrade row.
- In the row menu, the entry becomes Save as Favorite Print — Studio, disabled, followed by Upgrade to Studio….
- The favorite star in the print editor (Add to Favorites) is disabled and shows the limit message when there is no slot left.
- The automatic favorites generated from the bundled template are not shown under a cap.
- Prints over the limit are not deleted: they stay hidden and reappear as soon as the tier allows them.
- A global print shortcut pressed when the cap is reached creates nothing and posts the notification No print created with the reason.
- When a job with too many prints runs, it is pruned to the cap; the reason is recorded as {N} favorite print(s) over the Intro limit or {N} custom print(s) over the Intro limit.
Favorites when the tier changes
When the tier caps favorites (Intro), the favorite library is archived rather than trimmed: the prints disappear from the list but remain in the library file on disk. On any tier without the cap the library is restored, archived prints first in their original order, then the favorites that were kept within the cap, deduplicated. This reconciliation runs at every launch and whenever the tier changes, so moving from Intro to Studio brings every starred print back without any action on your part.
One module at a time in the queue
On Intro and Studio the queue only accepts jobs from the same module as the jobs already waiting; import, organize and export count as three modules. An empty queue, or one that holds only finished jobs, accepts anything. When a job is refused, fMusic shows a toast rather than an error, and the job is simply not added:
The queue already holds import work. fMusic Suite runs export and import jobs together; in Studio they queue one module at a time.
The module named in the toast is the one already waiting. On Suite the rule does not exist: a mixed queue runs everything in one pass.
The offline overlay
Intro and Studio need an internet connection; Suite works offline. When the Mac has no route to the internet, Intro and Studio show an overlay across the whole app: the session, the lanes and the work in progress stay intact underneath, keyboard and focus are disabled, and jobs already running continue. The overlay shows a crossed-out Wi-Fi icon, the title fMusic {Intro|Studio} needs an internet connection, the text The app will continue on its own as soon as the connection is back. Nothing you were working on is lost., a spinner with Waiting for the connection…, and the link Keep working with no connection at all. See fMusic Suite, which opens the pricing page.
The overlay dissolves on its own as soon as the connection returns; nothing needs to be clicked. Online means the system reports a working network route, not that any Forte server has answered, and fMusic starts optimistically, assuming it is online, at every launch.
The 7-day Organize trial
For 7 days from the first launch, fMusic unlocks Organize on top of your tier. Home shows it in the subtitle of the Organize Session section: Rename, reorder and recolor tracks. · Trial, {N} day(s) left. The indicator only appears while Organize is not already part of your plan, so on Suite you never see it.
Presentation vs enforcement. Disabled controls explain, they do not prevent: a value already saved, a placement mode chosen while on Suite, a print received from a colleague with its own mix source, stays stored and keeps showing. Enforcement happens on the job itself, once when it enters the queue and again when it runs, so an immediate run and a queued one are treated identically and a job queued on one tier follows the tier in force when it runs. Under a tier that lacks the capability: a template placement mode is read as Routing and the files still import; the normalization target is cleared; a print’s own mix source, marker range and audio formats fall back to inheriting from Print settings; tracks and prints over an Intro cap are pruned to the cap. Nothing you configured is deleted: regain the tier and the saved values apply again.
Gating inside the wizard
The Import and Organize wizard shows no badges and no overlays. Gating works upstream of it: the wizard reads preferences already filtered by tier, so on Studio a saved template placement mode is read as Routing and the template column of the routing table is never drawn. The tier becomes explicit in one place only, the confirmation dialog, through the locked-tracks line described above. The SUITE badges for placement modes and audio normalization live in Settings ▸ Import & Organize, not in the wizard.
Gating in Export
Export carries five Suite capabilities, Per-print mix source, Markers per print, Per-print audio formats, Categories from session elements (the Folder Export mode) and Print preview, plus the two Intro caps of one favorite and one custom print. In the print editor the blocked controls follow the standard pattern: visible, disabled, badged. When a job enters the queue under a tier that lacks these capabilities, its prints lose their own mix source, marker range and format overrides and go back to inheriting from Print settings; they stay valid and still render, with the project values. Prints over an Intro cap are dropped from the job, the reason recorded as {N} custom print(s) over the Intro limit. See Inherit vs override and Print preview.