What is a league?
A league is a group of people who play Music League together. Your league runs through a series of rounds — each round has a theme, a window for submitting songs, and a window for voting. At the end of each round, results are revealed and points are tallied. You can play with the same people across as many rounds as you like.
What do I need before I start?
- A Music League account (sign in or create one from the home screen).
- A music service connected — Spotify or Apple Music. You can't create a league until you've connected one. If you haven't yet, you'll be prompted to do so before the wizard opens.
How does the wizard work?
If you're using the Music League app from the App Store or Google Play, tap the + button on any screen to open the league creation wizard. On the web, click New League from the Home or Leagues page.
Creating a league takes you through five steps. You can go back and change anything before you launch, and your progress is saved automatically at each step so you can pick up where you left off.
- Identity
- Name your league — Give it a name your players will recognize and add an optional description. League names can only be added to, not changed, later.
- Set league privacy — Choose between Public (anyone can find and join it) or Private (invite-only). See Public vs. Private Leagues for what each setting means.
- Choose a league photo — Upload a photo or pick one from our library.
- Rounds — Decide how many rounds you want your league to have when it starts (the minimum is one). Give each one a title (theme) and description, from the library or your own, and decide whether to allow a duplicate artist, either across the entire league or within each round. Public leagues are limited to 20 rounds.
- Timing — Set the schedule: choose how quickly rounds move (pacing style: Steady, Accelerated, or Speedy), how long the submission and voting phases last, and when it all kicks off. See Setting Your League Schedule for all the options.
- Settings
- Determine how many songs players may and must submit per round.
- Select when (if) players can see each other's song submission comments.
- Turn Competitive Mode on or off (that is, whether non-voters get penalized).
- Decide how many votes (upvotes and downvotes) are available and how many of them are required. See How Voting Rules Work for more detail.
- Launch
- Invite players: select from people you follow, people who follow you, and anyone you've played with in the past.
- Get invite links to send to anyone you want off-platform.
- Edit an email template (provided) that details all the league settings.
Once you launch, the league is live and ready for players, and you can start inviting players right away. Your first round won't start until you've added a theme and either manually opened submissions or your schedule kicks in, which can be tied to the moment you select Launch League.
What if I don't finish in one sitting?
Your progress is saved automatically after each step. Your unfinished league shows up under the Drafts tab on your leagues page, with a progress bar and a "Continue" link that takes you right back to the step you were on. Drafts stick around as long as your account is active — you won't lose your work.
Can I change the settings after the league has started?
Some settings can be changed after launch, others are locked once the league starts.
- League name is locked at launch. The description, image, privacy setting, schedule and pacing, players allowed, Competitive Mode, and round settings (number of songs, comment visibility, days to submit and vote, and the duplicate-artist rule) can be edited after launch.
- Scoring rules can generally be adjusted after launch, but a change never affects the round that's already in progress — it takes effect on the next round. Settings that take effect next round say so beside them.
- The number of votes is locked once the league starts. Total upvotes, max upvotes per song, and all downvote settings can no longer be changed after launch — they're frozen so they can't unfairly impact votes players have already cast. The only automatic exception is that Music League may raise Max Upvotes per Song on its own when a round has too few songs for everyone to spend their votes.
- Pace stays editable after launch, from Edit league. A change applies right away, including to the round in progress, so tell your league when you change it.
- Round deadlines can be adjusted for upcoming rounds from each round's ⋮ menu → Edit round.
If you're not sure, open Edit league from the league's ⋮ menu — anything that can't be changed right now is disabled with the reason beside it.
How many people can join my league?
Leagues can start with as few as two people. Music League doesn't set a hard limit on players because some leagues can have players who don't submit songs. Leagues are limited to 100 songs per round. That said, voting and scoring work best with a manageable group — very large leagues get unwieldy for voting. The underlying point of Music League is to discover new music and rediscover forgotten gems, and big leagues lead to long playlists, which can be too much for some players to listen to.