How Voting Rules Work (and How They Auto-Adjust)

The Basics

Every round, each player gets a budget of points to distribute across the songs they can vote on. Three settings control this:

• Total upvotes each player may distribute — how many points each voter has to spend
• Total upvotes each player must distribute — how much of that pool the league expects a voter to spend, never more than the "may" number
• Max votes per song — the most any voter can put on a single track

For example, with 10 points and a max of 3 per song, you'd spread your votes across at least 4 songs to use them all. Some leagues don't require voting at all. Some include downvotes, which can also be optional or spent a number of different ways.

Saving vs. Submitting Your Ballot

Your ballot has two buttons: Save and Submit.

• Submit casts your final votes. Your League Admin sets how many upvote points you may spend and how many you must spend, so to submit you need to spend at least the required number and no more than the total (plus at least the required number of downvotes, if your league requires them). In most leagues the two numbers are the same, which means using all your points. Once submitted, your votes count immediately — you show up as "voted," and your points go toward the results.
• Save keeps a draft of your ballot without submitting it. You can save a partial ballot — you don't have to spend all your points yet. A saved ballot is not submitted: it doesn't count as a vote, it doesn't show you as "voted," and its points don't affect anyone's score yet. You can come back and change a saved ballot as often as you like, then Save again or Submit when you're ready.

What happens to a saved ballot you never submit? It converts to a submitted ballot automatically when the voting deadline passes — as-is, even if it's partial. That is true in every pacing style (🐢 Steady, ⚡ Speedy and 🐇 Accelerated): a saved ballot does not count as a vote, so it never trips the last-player-votes early unlock that Speedy and Accelerated use. Your league still ends voting early if everyone submits, but a ballot you only saved waits for the deadline. (If your League Admin ends voting early, that is the deadline arriving sooner, and your saved ballot converts then.)

A partial saved ballot counts exactly as saved — its points stand, it's never rejected or zeroed. So saving is always safe: your work is kept, and it will count even if you forget to hit Submit.

You don't have to vote on every song to have your votes count. But in a league with Competitive Mode on, if you don't use all your mandatory votes (the votes you must spend), any votes your songs received from other players that round won't count.

The Order Songs Appear In

When a round's submissions close, Music League shuffles the songs into one shared, random order and locks it in for the whole round. Everyone sees the songs in the same order on their ballot, and that order matches the round's Spotify and Apple Music playlists exactly — so the song at position 3 on your ballot is the song at position 3 in the playlist you generate. This prevents any player from having a consistent position advantage in a multi-round league. The order is genuinely random (never the order songs were submitted in) and never changes once it's set.

Your own submission stays in its spot in that shared order, clearly labeled "Your Song" — you just can't vote on it.

Why Do Vote Totals Have to Balance in Some Leagues and Not Others?

They never have to balance, but in leagues with Competitive Mode on, your songs may not receive the votes given by other players.

• In leagues where the number of votes you may spend equals the number you must spend, you have to spend all of them for your songs to get credit for the votes other players gave them. Your partial vote still counts if you submit it (or you save it and it converts to submitted when the deadline hits).
• In leagues where the number of votes you may spend is more than the number you must spend, only the votes you must spend have to balance for your songs to get credit for the votes other players gave them. Your partial vote still counts if you submit it (or you save it and it converts to submitted when the deadline hits).

Examples:

• Regardless of the number of votes you may spend, if the number you must spend is 5, and you give 3 votes to one song and 2 to another, that's a valid ballot (3 + 2 = 5). You can't give 3 votes to one song and 1 to another if you want your songs to receive points — the total must equal 5.
• If you may spend 8 votes and must spend 5, you can give one song 4 votes and another 3 votes (leaving one unspent) and you will have fulfilled the must-spend requirement.

In leagues with Competitive Mode off, your songs always receive the votes given by other players. Leagues with 0 must-spend votes always have Competitive Mode off.

The Rule You Can't Change: No Voting on Your Own Song

You can never vote on a song you submitted. This is by design — it keeps things fair and forces everyone to engage with the full playlist.

This matters for the math below.

Why the Numbers Have to Balance

Here's the constraint: total points ÷ max per song = minimum number of songs you need to vote on.

With 10 points and max 3 per song: ceil(10 ÷ 3) = 4 songs minimum.

If you only have 3 songs available to vote on (because you submitted 1 song in a 4-player league), you can only allocate 9 points — not 10. That's a problem.

What Happens When a League Has Too Few Players

Say you set up a league with:

• 10 points per member
• Max 3 votes per song
• 1 submission per player

You need at least 5 players for the default settings to work cleanly. With only 4 players, each voter sees 3 songs, can put max 3 on each, and can only reach 9 — but they have 10 to spend.

Music League handles this automatically. When the song submission window closes and voting is about to open, the system checks whether the math works for the actual number of songs submitted. If not, it raises the per-song limit just enough to make it work — then opens voting normally.

In this example, with 4 players and 3 votable songs, the cap would be raised from 3 → 4. Players can now put up to 4 points on any single song, and everyone can spend their full 10.

Auto-Adjustment: What You'll See

If the system makes an adjustment, the League Admin receives a notification explaining:

• What changed ("Max votes per song raised from 3 to 4")
• Why ("Only 3 songs available to vote on with 10 points to distribute")
• That no action is needed ("Voting is open")

Players see the adjusted limit on their ballot. Everything works — no one gets stuck.

The Vote Settings Are Locked Once the League Starts

Once a league is active, you can no longer change the number of votes available or required — the upvotes each player may distribute, the upvotes each player must distribute, max upvotes per song, and every downvote setting are frozen. Changing them mid-league would unfairly impact ballots players have already submitted. (Other settings, like how many songs each player submits, can still be changed between rounds — those take effect on the next round, never the one in progress.)

The automatic Max Upvotes per Song adjustment described above is the one exception to this lock. It's the only thing that can raise voting criteria after the league has started, and it only ever happens when a round would otherwise leave players unable to spend all their votes — so the league never gets stuck.

How Downvotes Work

If downvotes are enabled, each player gets a separate pool of negative points to assign. Downvotes work like upvotes: your League Admin sets how many downvotes each player may distribute per round and how many they must distribute (from 0 up to the may number). A must of 0 makes downvotes optional; in Speedy leagues it is at least 1. You still can't downvote your own song, regardless.

If your league has downvotes you must distribute:

• To submit, spend at least the required number of downvotes and no more than the total you may distribute.
• Competitive Mode must be on. Use your required downvotes or you won't get credit for upvotes given to your songs, and you will receive downvotes.
• Your partial ballot can be submitted (if it is saved, it converts to submitted at the deadline).
• If a round has too few songs to spread upvotes and downvotes across different songs, the required downvotes drop to 0 for that round so you can still submit your ballot. Your ballot shows a note when this happens.

If your league's downvotes are optional (must is 0):

• Competitive Mode, on or off, only applies to upvotes, so there is no penalty related to the use of your optional downvotes.
• If there are not enough songs submitted to use all the available upvotes, the number of upvotes available per song increases, as described above.

What Can't Be Auto-Fixed

The one situation the system can't rescue: fewer than 2 different players submitted a song in a round. Voting needs at least two distinct submitters to be meaningful — you can't vote for your own songs, so a single submitter leaves nothing to vote on. When that happens the round enters its voting phase but holds: no playlist, no ballot, and no winner or points. A note explains the hold.

If the submission phase is still open and only one player has submitted songs, the League Admin can extend the song submission deadline. If the round advances to the voting phase with only one player having submitted, the League Admin would need to advance the league to the next song submission window (or wait for the deadline). They always have the option to add another round to the league.

Player Progress Visibility: Who Submitted and Who Voted

Each round has two progress-visibility settings a League Admin can set from the round's edit page. Both are on by default. When the league launches, and as it progresses, they can be changed for each round using Edit round (until voting opens each round).

• Who has submitted — on by default. Players' icons appear on the league page under "Waiting for" until they submit their song(s), then under "Submitted". When this is off, a blank icon appears instead.
• Who has voted — on by default. Players' icons appear on the league page under "Waiting for" until they vote, then under "Voted". When this is off, a blank icon appears instead.

The League Admin always sees the full list. These toggles only change what other players see; you keep the complete view of who has and hasn't participated so you can still nudge people along.

Settings lock once voting begins. You can change these toggles while a round is upcoming or in its submission window. The moment voting opens, they lock — if you open the round's settings after that, the toggles are shown read-only with the note "Visibility settings can't be changed once voting has begun." This keeps a round's privacy from shifting out from under players mid-round.

Controlling Duplicate Artists and Songs

Duplicate-artist rules are set up on the Rounds step (Step 2) when you build your league, and afterwards under Advanced options on Edit league. They work in two levels.

The same song can't be submitted twice. If a player tries to submit a song that was already submitted at any point in the league, they won't be able to, regardless of the duplicate artist settings below.

The league-wide toggle — "Allow duplicate artists league-wide." This sits right below the Rounds heading, above your list of rounds.

• Off — an artist can only be submitted once across the whole league. A submission that repeats an artist from an earlier round, or one already submitted in an active round, is rejected. Because the league-wide rule already governs every round, no per-round choice appears.
• On — you decide round by round. Each round card then shows its own "Allow duplicate artist in this round" toggle.

The per-round toggle — "Allow duplicate artist in this round." This only appears when the league-wide toggle is on.

• On — an artist can be submitted by multiple players in that round. A player submitting a song by an artist already submitted that round is given a warning first. The first song submitted for that artist is shown normally during voting; if a player submits anyway, the later song by the same artist is flagged (see below).
• Off — any submission from an artist already submitted in that round is disallowed.

You can change these settings between rounds, but a change never affects a round that's already in progress — it takes effect on the next round.

The "Duplicate Artist" Marker During Voting

In rounds that allow duplicate artists (the per-round toggle is on), it's possible for two or more songs by the same artist to end up in the round. When that happens, the ballot flags it during voting.

• The first song submitted for that artist is shown normally — no marker.
• Every later song sharing that artist gets a small red "Duplicate artist" marker on its card.

The marker helps voters tell apart songs that might otherwise look similar, and it flags the entries that went ahead despite the submission-time warning. It's tied to the song, not the person — it reveals no submitter name and no submission time, so anonymous rounds stay anonymous. If the earlier song is later removed or changed by a League Admin, the marker recalculates: whichever song is now the earliest for that artist becomes unmarked.

This only applies within a single round. Rounds that disallow duplicate artists — and every round in a league where the league-wide toggle is off — never show the marker, because a second song by the same artist can't be submitted there in the first place.

Voting Progress Visibility: When Results Appear

When voting closes — Results appear automatically when voting ends, in every league. For leagues with fewer than 6 players this is the only option:

• Steady leagues — at the voting deadline
• Speedy and Accelerated leagues — when the last player votes (or the deadline hits)

During the round — For leagues with 6 or more players, a League Admin can enable one of four voting progress windows, from the round's edit page under "Voting Progress Visibility". After a player votes is the default. When the league launches, and as it progresses, this can be changed for each round using Edit round (until voting opens each round):

• After a player votes (default) — each player sees a running vote tally as soon as they vote
• After one-third of the vote is in — each player who has voted can see a running vote tally once more than a third of the league has voted
• During the middle one-third of voting — each player who has voted can see a running vote tally once more than a third of the league has voted, until fewer than a third of the league's votes are still out. The tally is then hidden from players for the final stretch and returns when voting closes
• Until one-third of the votes are still out — each player who has voted sees a running vote tally until fewer than a third of the league's votes are still out. The tally is then hidden from players for the final stretch and returns when voting closes

Two rules always hold, no matter which option you pick:

• A player never sees results until they've voted themselves. Even with an early-reveal option on, someone who hasn't voted yet sees "Results appear once you've voted."
• You (the League Admin) always see live results. Reveal timing only changes what other players see — you keep the full view at any time.

The count that decides the one-third marks is locked in when voting opens, so it doesn't shift if someone leaves the league mid-round. When a reveal happens, results appear on players' screens live — no refresh needed — and when the tally hides for the final stretch, it disappears from their ballots the same way. And just like the identity toggles, this setting locks once voting begins.

For leagues with fewer than 6 players, blind voting is the default and the only option, since showing a running tally in a small group makes individual votes too easy to infer.

Tips for League Admins

If you want to avoid auto-adjustments altogether, use a higher max per song or lower the points per member. A simple rule: max per song should be at least ceil(points ÷ (expected players − 1)).

But honestly — don't stress it. The system will handle it.