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. Two settings control this:

• Points per member — how many total points each voter has to spend
• 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.

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 administrator 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 — total upvotes per player, 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.

Downvotes Follow the Same Rules

If downvotes are enabled, the same math applies to the downvote budget. If players couldn't spend all their downvote points given the number of available songs, the max downvotes per song is raised automatically as well.

What Can't Be Auto-Fixed

The one situation the system can't rescue: fewer than 3 songs submitted in a round. Voting requires at least 3 songs to be meaningful. If fewer than 3 players submitted, the administrator is notified and given a window to resolve it — after which the round is skipped.

Tips for Administrators

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.