Content is a broad term that applies to a variety of elements. It’s often bundled with music creation and production software known as Digital Audio Workstations, or DAWs such as Ableton Live, Steinberg Cubase, PreSonus StudioOne, Apple Logic and GarageBand, Propellerhead Reason, Avid Pro Tools, and others.

MIDI is a form of digital communication used in DAWs and notation software, and offers a lot of control and flexibility for the user to write and edit melodies and/or rhythms for their software instruments.

An audio loop can be a drum beat, bass line, chord progression, or short melody. The other kind of loops is MIDI loops, which are designed to be used with software instruments, using — you guessed it — MIDI notation.

The content is often commissioned by Ableton, or designed to fill a specific need Ableton feels their users have. Content is also pitched to the company by creators. Working with about 100 to 150 freelance content creators, content is collected and designed in all styles of music.

The various elements of a content collection are usually designed to complement each other, and may be grouped by style, genre, tempo, or sound quality. They’re designed in this way to help users form a composition without having to use multiple collections, and elements from different collections may not mix so well together.

Ryan Gruss, CEO and founder of the Loop Loft, a company that creates “signature artist” collections, comments in the article on how their collections (as well as Artist Packs in general) offer individual users a previously unparalleled ease of access to the work of professional musicians. In light of this, Gruss remarks, “The music production process has been democratized to a great degree.”

Audio loops are embedded with “warp markers,” codes that automatically analyze the music and identify the start of each note. This way, the program can read the markers to have the audio play at any tempo the user wants. The loop will sync to match the tempo of your session.

Software instruments typically come with a variety of controls to affect precise aspects of tone production. This creates a lot of potential multi-use in instruments, and presents content creators with another creative outlet through programming presets.