Okay, first, bravio with other class changes. Some are decent.
Why the Bard nerf? You state:
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their songs were weak (except for fascinate, which was horribly broken),
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But in fact, only the new Bard's song are weak.
Look at the old Bard for a second. Look at first level, heck for comparison, look at 1-7th level.
What does your Bard do in battle?
Nothing but melee/range? Yeah…pretty much since so little casting and no Bard music that does anything useful in battle.
You make Inspire Courage to be level 2 (switching Inspire Competence with it?)
In addition, your flavor test now doesn't even fit.
Have you even looked at it? You say: Bolstering them against fear and improving their combat abilities.
But there is no improvement; copy + paste error?
Now compare your Bard versus 3.5 Bard:
Your Bard has: Bardic Knowledge (some improvement), Jack of All Trades: improves skill(s).
3 songs: While nice all they do is negate sonic stuff (mostly unchanged from Countersong other Bard has), improves saves (but not attack/damage), and stuff like skills.
Now I applaude the improving bonus based on performance (gives a reason to have more than base skill ranks).
But compare to 3.5 Bard:
Improve skill, saves, damage, attack bonus, countersong also, Fascinate, suggestion, and Bardic Knowledge (useful to research legendary people aka Level 11 people).
Now, yours gets nifty stuff, but mostly just rp value.
3.5 Bard has +2 minimum bonus to Inspire Courage, but with non-core up to +6 with just 8 levels of Bard.
Now even in comparison with Core: I'd rather have a Bard improving the party in battle then just skills (wait, we have inspire competence as well).
I mean, if you are going to take away the Bards combat value at level 1: Could you at least improve their spell acquisition?
Give them 0 level 1 spells (and 1 known level 1). That way they have more ability even if that isn't much.