Support · How to Play Music League

The complete guide to playing Music League — how the game works, getting started, creating a league, and answers to the most common questions.

How Music League works

A league is a group of people who play together across a series of rounds.
Each round features a theme — such as "Covers", "A song you can't get out of your head" or "The song that reminds us of Summer Camp."
When a round opens, every player submits a song, or songs, from their music service that fit the theme. Submissions are anonymous at first.
After the song submission window closes, a playlist is generated for each player (in Spotify or Apple Music) and voting opens. The community votes on the songs they like the most and/or songs that best fit the theme.
Each player gets a budget of points to distribute across songs they like (and, if the League Admin enabled them, downvotes for songs they don't).
When voting closes, results are revealed — who submitted what, how everyone voted, and the comments people left. A round winner is crowned.
In leagues with multiple rounds, points from each round change the league's standings. The player with the most points at the end wins.

Getting started

1. Create your Music League account. Every player needs a Music League account. There are a few ways to make one:

Log in with Spotify (fastest if you have an account — free accounts work) — on the sign-up or sign-in page, tap Spotify. Music League creates your account from your Spotify profile and connects Spotify in the same step.
Log in with Apple — sign in with your Apple account. This signs you in; you'll then connect Apple Music in the next step (Apple keeps signing in and music access separate).
Sign up with email and password — create your account with a display name, email, and password. You'll then be taken straight to a screen to connect a music service before you can participate in a league.

2. Connect a music service. Music League needs one to work — your music service is how songs are searched, how round playlists are built, and how you listen during voting. You can connect Spotify or Apple Music; either one works.

Spotify: a free or premium account works equally well, with one exception: Spotify will add songs to playlists that are not part of the round. You'll know which those are when you vote. If you signed up with "Log in with Spotify," the connection is made for you. If your connection ever lapses, Music League will ask you to reconnect the same way.
Apple Music: you must have a paid Apple Music account. You connect Apple Music as a separate step from registering your account, even if you registered with Apple. If your connection ever lapses, Music League will ask you to reconnect.

See Connecting a music service for the details.

3. Join or create a league.

Joining after being invited: open the invite link a friend sent you, then tap Join League. Or look for the league in your Leagues tab in the app.
Browsing: Public leagues are listed on the Home screen under Discover a League, and on the Discover tab. Public leagues are open for anyone to join until they fill up, and a full league drops off the Discover tab. Leagues that are past the first round's song submission phase can be filtered out by ticking Hide Leagues past Round 1.
- In the Who's playing: group, tick Friends to see leagues your friends are in, Following to see leagues with people you follow, or both to see either.
Creating a league: tap New League from your Leagues page, or find the Start a League box on the Home screen, to launch the setup wizard (more on that below).

Creating a league

Setting up a new league walks you through a five-step wizard. Your progress is saved at every step, so you can leave and come back.

Identity — name your league, add a description and cover image and choose Private (invite-only) or Public (discoverable).
Rounds — the wizard starts you with three rounds. Add or remove rounds, drag to reorder, edit each round's title and description or pick from the theme library.
Timing — set the date and time Round 1 opens. The remaining round deadlines are calculated automatically from your pace, but you can edit them if needed and add breaks between rounds. Also pick your league's pace:
- Steady — fixed schedule
- Accelerated — generates a playlist and reveals vote results when everyone finishes
- Speedy — same as Accelerated, but the next phase starts right away
Settings — set max players and the number of songs that may and must be submitted per round. Set the voting budget: upvotes that may and must be spent per round and the max per song. Choose when submission comments become visible and whether to include downvotes (and how many each player may and must spend per round), and whether the league will operate in competitive mode.
Launch — search and invite players. You can filter by people you've played with before, your followers and people you follow. You'll get a customized email invitation that explains all the league settings. You can send it from within the app or copy a link and send it any way you want. Pending email invitations are sent the moment you launch.

Anything goes, but the sweet spot is 4–6 rounds, 5–15 players and 1 or 2 songs per round. To encourage listening there is one limit: the number of songs generated each round cannot exceed 100. Pick themes broad enough that people can pull a song from memory rather than reaching for Google.

For step-by-step detail, see the Creating a League article.

FAQs

How do I submit a song?

When a round is open for submissions, open the round and tap Submit a song.

You can:

Choose a song from a list of what you've listened to most recently on your primary music service (Spotify or Apple Music).
Search your music service directly inside Music League by typing a song or artist. Search uses your primary service's catalog (Spotify or Apple Music).
If Spotify is your primary music service, paste a track link copied from the Spotify app or website.

Tap Select inside the song's box — this makes the song Your selection but does not submit it yet. Your selection is saved right away, so it's still there if you come back later or open Music League on another device. You'll see an optional comment field with a Submit song button under it. Add a comment if you like (timing of when other players see it depends on how the League Admin set up the rounds), then tap Submit song (or Submit song and comment) to lock in your pick. Selecting a different song replaces your selection. You can change your submission as long as the round is still in the submission phase.

Can I save my songs without submitting them?

Yes, automatically. If a round asks for more than one song, you don't have to pick them all in one sitting — every song you select is saved the moment you select it, along with any comment you have typed by your next Select or Submit, so you can come back, add the rest, or change a pick as often as you like until the round's submission deadline. A saved-but-not-submitted entry does not count as submitted: it won't show you as having submitted, and it doesn't trigger a round to advance early. Saving doesn't reserve a song: if another player submits the same song first (or the same artist, in a round that doesn't allow duplicate artists), you'll need to change yours before you can submit, or it's dropped when submissions close.

What happens if you never tap Submit? Your saved songs convert to submitted automatically when submissions close, as-is, even if you didn't finish picking every required song. Submissions close at the deadline, or earlier if the League Admin closes them or everyone has submitted. If your league requires everyone to submit a set number of songs per round and your entry still falls short of that number when submissions close (whether it was saved and converted automatically, or you removed a song after submitting), you won't be able to vote in that round, the same outcome as skipping the round's submission entirely. The submission screen tells you how many more songs you need.

Can I submit fewer songs than the round asks for? Yes. Tap Submit with whatever you've picked; the songs you didn't pick stay open, and you can add them until the submission deadline. If that leaves you short of the number your league requires, the app asks you to confirm first, because an incomplete submission can't vote in that round.

Do I need a paid music account?

Spotify: a free or premium account works equally well, with one exception: Spotify will add songs to playlists that are not part of the round.

Apple Music: you can only connect an account you subscribe to.

How many players and rounds should a league have?

Leagues can support up to 100 players, but that is not recommended. Smaller leagues feel more personal; longer leagues can lose momentum — especially for players who fall behind. Private leagues have no round limit; public leagues are capped at 20 rounds. The sweet spot is 8–15 players over 4–6 rounds.

Do League Admins have an advantage?

The League Admin sees nothing about submissions or votes that other players don't see, with one exception: if they add rounds as the league moves along, they'll know what's coming before the rest of the league. This is discouraged in general, but makes sense for some leagues — for example, leagues in which a round winner creates the following round's theme, or leagues where everyone takes turns creating round themes.

Note: there can be multiple League Admins.

Why can't I vote on my own song?

Because it's not sporting.

What happens if I miss a deadline?

Deadlines keep things moving for the whole group:

Miss the submission deadline: you don't have a song in that round's playlist. You can still listen to the playlist and comment on songs, but you cannot vote.
Miss the voting deadline: if you have votes saved but not submitted when the voting deadline hits, they convert to submitted votes, even if you didn't use all available or mandatory votes. If your league has Competitive Mode on and you do not submit all the mandatory votes on time, any upvotes given to your songs that round are discarded — downvotes against you still count.

What are downvotes?

Downvotes are an optional feature League Admins can turn on. They can be mandatory or optional. They let voters subtract points from songs they don't like or — when downvotes are mandatory — songs they like "as much." (Mandatory downvotes are generally used in competitive leagues with more serious players.) League Admins control how many downvotes each player can use and how many, if any, they must use.

Where do my playlists live?

Music League creates each round's playlist — and if you want, an entire league's playlist — inside your own library on your primary service, Spotify or Apple Music. You can find it in your service and keep it forever, even after the league ends.

Why did I lose my music connection?

A few things can disconnect your music service from Music League:

Your access lapsed. Spotify access tokens have a limited lifespan and Apple Music access can expire because it can't be refreshed in the background. If we can't restore the connection automatically, we'll ask you to reconnect — and for Apple Music, we'll bring you back to right where you were.
Someone else connected the same account. Each Music League account must be tied to a unique music-service account. If a friend or family member connects the same account to their own Music League account, your connection is replaced.
You may have disconnected the service. If you tapped Disconnect on the connection card in your music settings, or removed access to Music League from your Spotify apps page or Apple Music, your connection ends immediately and you'll have to reconnect the next time you use Music League.
The service is down. If Spotify's or Apple's service is having an outage, Music League can't verify your session. Try again in a few minutes.

To reconnect, open your music settings and tap Connect (or Switch account) on the service you want to use.

I tried "Log in with Spotify" and got an error. Why?

If your Spotify account doesn't have an email address on file, Music League can't create or sign you in to an account using Log in with Spotify. Every Music League account is tied to an email address — that's how we identify your account, send you league notifications and let you recover access if you ever lose your music connection.

This usually happens with older Spotify accounts that were created before Spotify required an email, or accounts created through certain partner sign-ups like Facebook, Google and even Apple.

There are two ways to fix it:

Add an email to your Spotify account. Go to spotify.com/account/profile, add and verify an email address, then come back and try Log in with Spotify again.
Sign up with email and password instead. Create your Music League account on the sign-up screen using any email you control, then connect your music service from the screen that follows. You'll end up with the same result — a Music League account with a music service connected.

How do I delete my account or data?

Open your Profile page and use the Delete Account option. This removes your personal data — name, email, comments, chat messages — and removes you from any leagues you're currently in.

Songs you previously submitted stay in the database and on the round playlists, but they're no longer tied to you in any way.

If you connected Spotify and also want to revoke Music League's Spotify access, you can do so at spotify.com/account/apps — we can't do that on your behalf.

How do I reply to a chat message?

Tap the reply arrow next to a chat message, write your reply, and tap Reply. Replies stay under the message they answer, collapsed behind an "N replies" link so the chat stays easy to scroll. Tap that link to open or close the thread.

When someone replies, the message's author and everyone already in that thread get a notification. Threads are one level deep: every reply goes under the original message.

How do I report a chat message or comment?

Hover over (or tap, on mobile) the chat message or comment, then tap the flag icon on a chat message, or the Report link below a comment. Pick a reason, optionally add a note, and submit.

Reports go to the League Admin, not Music League support. The League Admin can hide the content, delete it, or dismiss the report. You'll be notified when they take action either way. The author of the reported content is not told who reported them. The League Admin can forward the report to Music League.

See Reporting Chat Messages and Comments for the full walkthrough.

I'm a League Admin — what tools do I have to moderate my league?

In addition to all the league and round settings, you can hide or delete any chat message or comment in your league directly (hover over the row to see the flag and trash buttons), or wait for reports to come in through your Reports queue (linked from the three-dot menu on the league's main page).

You can also kick a member (removed, can rejoin if invited or if the league is public) or ban them (removed and blocked from rejoining until you unban them).

See League Admin Moderation Tools for the differences between hide, delete, dismiss, kick, and ban — and what survives when a member is removed.

What's the difference between following someone and friending them?

Follow is one-way — you don't need permission to follow another player. They get a notification but don't have to accept. That goes both ways — people can follow you without permission, but you can set your profile visibility so they won't see anything you don't want them to.

Friend is two-way — you send a request and the other player accepts or declines. Once accepted, you appear as friends on each other's profiles.

You can do both. See Following Players and Adding Friends for the full comparison.

Where is my Music League Year-in-Review?

While the Year-in-Review window is live (late December through mid-February), look for the banner at the top of your Leagues page or the "Music League Year-in-Review" link in your profile menu. Tap either.

If you accidentally closed the banner, sign out and back in — or use the profile menu link, which stays available the whole time the window is live. You can also save your Year-in-Review as a PDF and share a public link with friends.

See Music League Wrapped (Year-in-Review) for the full guide.

Learn more

For deeper guides on specific topics, head to Support: