MUSIC LEAGUE - a way to gamify your music taste

MUSIC LEAGUE IS A FUN GAME WHERE EVERY ROUND YOU PICK OUT SONGS BASED ON A THEME
THEN A PLAYLIST IS CREATED
THEN YOU VOTE ON THE SONGS VIA UPVOTES AND DOWNVOTES

WHO WANTS TO PLAY MUSIC LEAGUE?

I'll start a ILX league with a basic 5 round game - winners will get to pick the theme of the rounds in the next game.

You can play on mobile or web.

JOIN HERE https://app.musicleague.com/l/ec1767aa53a34d73aa8cbd4f9c5e8aa1/

Looks interesting but it seems you need spotify to sign up and I'm not going to use spotify, sorry.

Samwell - What What In The Butt

exactly! i dont pay for spotify and i still play

The Roches - Hammond Song (Arthur Baker "Downtown" rmx)

lol one of my besties plays this, she is always pissed of at the rest of the comparatively mainstream tastes in her group

3 players so far woo!

Yeah I’m in. Sounds fun.

aight i'll do it

we have 4!!!

SIX!!!

I HAVE JOINED THUS

THIS

Oh I’m so happy

Im the one with the Steve Perry avatar

this sounds awesome, I'm in

i have entered the building

good you're the one I wanna beat

I definitely won't be this first round though lol

10! WE HAVE A LEAGUE PEOPLE!

like a maniac I have my choices set up for the next rounds too

It took me a while to work out how to submit my votes. It looks like you're given an allocation of 10 plus points and 2 minus points, which you can distribute amongst the songs however you want, i.e. you can give a song more than 1 plus/minus points, or you can leave a song on 0 points.

Yah I can change that I’d people want that’s just how my other leagues are

It's good this way!

The fact that you can give out negative points is gonna tank my chances at ever winning this thing

Jumped aboard too late for Round 1, but I'll be able to play in Round 2.

The chat and comments make for the best part of the leagues. Plus non-algorithmic music discoveries.

Oof should have disabled downvotes. I feel bad downvoting other people’s noms and there’s nothing I think even warrants them in this round.

Someone less lazy than me should transcribe the tracklists from the playlists in here for future reference.

So we have to give two downvotes and also can't give more than three upvotes to any one song? Is that right?

No more than 3*

I like downvotes because I’m a hater

If only the White Mountain Cooler jingle from 1986 was on Spotify. Damn thing has a "You Give Love A Bad Name"-style chorus intro, a verse, a pre-chorus, and another chorus, all in 30 seconds!? I guess that means that their next commercial was their "New Jersey"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1XlpbUVaUY

I’m lolling a little at the blurb that’s longer than the song it’s describing

VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE

Oh it’s a relief to see my song climb the standings as more votes go in lol

lol, this is not the experience I am having

I didn't get last place so that's nice

One voter remains. What could possibly be riding on it?

looks like my song is the one people are the most indifferent to, that's something at least

Wow! ILX hates weird Paul!

I thought it was ok, it was just not as good as all the other songs, so I had to downvote it per the rules of this game

Love it

(The hater energy)

Just voted - maybe I needed at least 900 more gecs

Very interested in the tracklist for round 2! Love grooving.

I’m gonna suck so bad at round 3 I don’t know any britpop music. I don’t even know what can be considered as Britpop besides the obvious things. Are the Stone Roses britpop? Is early The Verve allowed?

I'm not even sure I know what a groove is so I might sit the next one out for fear of making an embarrassing mistake.

Thanks to the first round for "Final Day" which I did not know and which has been haunting my brain for the last few days.

This round made me realize that the short songs I respond to most are the ones where the song itself is in some way about not quite having enough time. Also, I think, why I have always responded more strongly to the Stones cover of "Good Times" than to the Sam Cooke original: the Stones version is shorter, under two minutes, and I think that's one reason it's always given me a more intense feeling of a fleeting golden moment that will not be repeated.

so no one else is waking up every morning with "Bart and Marge, they are in charge" stuck in their head?

Oh you seriously need to get on the Colossal Youth album. It sits on its own plane of existence.

Xpost to lily

And Lily: I think of groovy music as music with an insistent rhythm that makes you feel like bobbin your head, your body, your mind. don’t overthink it, just groove.

Sorry kurt (//0~~0//) xps

Do we have to allocate all our votes? As did feel bad down voting

good you're the one I wanna beat

― frogbs, Friday, 11 October 2024 19:01 (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

hee hee

i dont know any britpop either! you dont gotta allocate nuthin!

Just joined! I miss my old league (which fell apart when two of the members broke up w/each other). ILX oughtta put me in my place.

I’m a fan of downvotes & collegial hater energy — catty takedowns of other folks’ picks were always fun to read. Or to write.

yeah, I'm going to use a very broad definition of britpop for my pick I think

if my picks tend to be obscure, its just because I myself would prefer hearing new-to-me in this but it’s all good

new-to-me songs

welcome, HD!

I'm not even sure I know what a groove is so I might sit the next one out for fear of making an embarrassing mistake.

groove is "in the heart," some may say

welcome, HD!

I think Britpop's a good call for Round 3, as it's such a reviled genre here, which makes digging out some worthwhile tunes an interesting challenge.

The question is, are we limiting ourselves to the initial 'Britpop' years

I mean, I'm happy to. Got some ideas yknow

Looks like it's full.. can we expand the league size by a few heads?

sure

i signed up for this yesterday

Really looking forward to hearing the round 2 selections

Playlist really grooves. I hate that I have to downvote because I love every track.

People came with their A-game on this playlist, wow

I know. Forget about Britpop, we should make round 3 more of this. It’s great.

wait how long do you have to submit a song? I'm locked out already :/

I'm gonna have to listen to this one a bunch of times before voting, all very good and most of it I don't know.

yall kicked out the jams

wait how long do you have to submit a song? I'm locked out already :/

― frogbs

I think it gave 48 hours to submit a song after the last round ended.

I hate that I have to downvote because I love every track

At least downvoting will be easier next round

Just joined, can’t submit a song either atm

we're in the voting stage for Get Funky so new people will have to wait until the Britpop submissions open up next week

there's lots of good stuff in this playlist that is unfortunately going to get no votes from me, there's just too many amazing songs to be able to spread votes around fairly

I'm in, getting funky.

I added more points and one more downvote since more people joined

Yeah, cheers for adding one more downvote 🙃

But yeah, that bit's probably the hardest, especially in this round.

oh so do you have to use all your votes, including downvotes?

yes you can use up to 3 votes a song

For the record, this is the KMFDM song I ultimately decided against:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arD0gYbzM90

tbf thats p fonkay

God damn, y'all Music Leaguers did not disappoint! Almost half the list are songs I'd not heard before, which is why I joined such a league - show me great tracks I somehow missed in my 49 years!

Can the league admin open it up to more players? Or is that not possible once a league is underway?

No spoilers but has anyone else who's voted looked at the results so far?

Oof

posting some sort of boredoms/oranssi pazuzu psych-noise kosmische meltdown to the 'get funky' thread may sound like a completely hopeless enterprise, but someone's got to do it

groovypanda your support (based on the unbroken run of minusings briefly reversing when you voted) has been noted ofc. a real one

We are at 25 players right now which makes a really long playlist! I’m going to have one more round to see how that pans out before opening up to more players

Maybe we can start a second league for new players and those that want a second league to join?

LETS GET THOSE VOTES IN

I would give it a go

I signed up and bookmarked the site. A second league sounds fun

I might be kicking out a whole bunch of people if THEY DONT VOTE SOON so there just might be room soon 😅

Then again, considered deliberations are better than hot takes!

If people are kicked out based on scores then I'm going to have to amend my selection strategy

That said, next round should in theory play into my hands. The trick is to choose something where it's not obvious who posted it, lol

I would never kick you out LJ 😘

a promotion and relegation system sounds fun, actually

i did pretty well last round, not so much this round, which makes me solidly mid-table

Feels good to have voted. Tough round! And big playlists are gonna make this challenging to keep up with — I was in a 10-person league and that was hard enough.

Finally voted, didn’t really want to downvote anything!

Ooooooh, my favourite discovery here is making a thrilling late run!

alright alright i voted. it was hard, but not as hard as these funkay grooooves

Sorry to be Johnny Deliberate. 😁 I like to give the list a few full listens each day to absorb the new (to me) tunes before deciding who earns my votes (y'all have some deep mental catalogues of music!)

Same here. I’m not one of those Xgau “i know exactly how i feel about a thing within a minute of encountering it” guys.

i feel like i was a little too mean to the sharon jones song. the daptone aesthetic is mildly annoying to me but it's a good song and performance

"misdemeanor" was my favorite find from this round, it has like six different hooks crammed into one little song. but i really enjoyed the whole thing.

Congrats to ENOCH ROOT for winning the funk round! Current standings:

https://i.imgur.com/zf5bQc5.png

Hi Moka!

Hi mike!

I got lucky in the first round. I don’t think I’ll do too good with britpop and I’ll definitely do bad in the round four but I’ll blame my parents for that one.

Btw BRITPOP votes are open! I don’t think I’d consider many of these as strict britpop but it’s a great playlist once again so no complaints.

I know commenting on the tracks in public before the end of the poll is probably frowned upon, so let's just say that I find myself listening to the [redacted] debut album in full. I'm having a great time

I admit to laughing out loud when I saw the first song

another killer playlist

Maybe I would have had a good run if I had nommed a Black Box Recorder song.

I know commenting on the tracks in public before the end of the poll is probably frowned upon, so let's just say that I find myself listening to the (redacted) debut album in full. I'm having a great time

― imago, Thursday, October 24, 2024 10:32 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

you talking about my pick? yeah it's better than I expected

I guess we can definitively say Blur won Blur vs Oasis now

One of these songs was on my own shortlist, so yay for that. Another is from an act who I thought were universally scorned here, so yay again that I'm not the only one who rates them.

Ok curious about which act it is because nothing seems particularly controversial to me.

xxp if Wibbling Rivalry was on Spotify though…

Gomez? xp

voting is tough, i didn't want to be unkind to anything i vaguely liked so i spread them almost as thinly as possible.

Yeah, the number of votes vs players means you gotta make choices.

i did big up some. i'll try and be crueler next time.

Not sure if it's the same for everyone but the Teenage Fanclub song on the playlist is greyed out here in the UK

I was going to pick a Salad song but it showed up as grayed out

the st. etienne song was grayed out for me here in the U.S. but i just went on youtube and listened there
the gomez song also did not play properly on spotify, it would play the first few seconds then go quiet, but that might have been a me problem

spotify sucks! i dont pay for spotify so my playlists are shuffled, i have commercials and grey'd out songs. i look them up on youtube though. the pains i go through for music league!

I'm in the UK and the Teenage Fanclub song is greyed out on the playlist for me, but if I click through to the TF spotify page the full album appears including that song?

If people are listening to the Saint Etienne song on youtube then I think we need full disclosure on whether they're voting based on the album version or the Alan Tarney produced single version, might demand a re-run depending on how badly my song does

if that is your song, I wouldn't be too concerned tbh

I’m already plotting out which song I’m going to put up for the next round. I have way too many to choose from.

Next one is going to be extremely difficult to pick yeah

Absolutely. I’m currently working on mixed CDs for mom and dad for Xmas, though, so it’s a very timely round for me!

next round is going to be tough for me. My parents never listened to much music, I'll try and come up with something.

my dad I believe has never deliberately listened to popular music in his life. my mum did in the 60s but I don't know her favourites, probably nothing out of the ordinary.

Conversely, my dad called me a couple of years ago and said “did you put this Algiers station on my Pandora account? Because its FANTASTIC”

I'll say that since the next round isn't "your" taste per se, context and a backstory will help with votes!

I'm in the UK and the Teenage Fanclub song is greyed out on the playlist for me, but if I click through to the TF spotify page the full album appears including that song?

I assume every kid in the UK is given a copy of Bandwagonesque (along with Tricky's Maxinquaye, of course) when they turn 13, thus no need for Spotify, maybe that's why 😎

xp the Saint Etienne version on the playlist is the album version, not the single version.

Whoever wins, thanks kurt!

Appears to be no universally hated songs this time

So what do you win? The winners kf this league will get to decided the themes for the next league. We will do 12 rounds and the top three will get to pick 4 rounds each.

I like that. If you want to make it shorter it can be 6 rounds. First place picks 3, second place 2 and third place 1.

solid mid table, I'm happy with that.

Pipped by Sleeper at the death. Bah

Am enjoying the comments getting more involved/spicier

I finished near the bottom again, but I'm glad I was able to introduce This Summer to some Squeeze fans who hadn't heard it before. Can I respond to comments here?

Good song, almost classic D&T, even if there’s a little too much “aren’t we having FUN!” vibes.

I always thought the song sounds kind of melancholy, this mixture of anthemic vigour and melancholy that is distinctively britpop, I think the “aren’t we having FUN!” vibe is supposed to be strained and brittle, the singer is aware that the happiness he describes is unstable and possibly transient, and has to be insisted upon as a result. It's a giddy sense of fun that already carries a foretaste of the ensuing comedown.

bit of the old south east london saudade

whoops! forgot to vote

I have already picked a song for the next round

Me too.

Would any of our American friends like to throw a little light on what constitutes a "road trip" song as I think that may be one of those things that gets lost in translation a little

Let it rolllll
Down the highwayyyy

Am enjoying the comments getting more involved/spicier

Definitely one of the reasons I joined, knowing that people who regularly offer their witticisms on the borad would give us gold (and introduce us to new stuff)

i was surprised my boyracer pick did as well as it did, i was expecting negative votes tbh

I didn’t not expect Lush to be compared to Elastica

ILX poster Willl told me about this over the weekend. It says the group is full though :-(

Yeah, play that Lush track next to Elastica's Waking Up and you'll spot a connection.

how dare they rip off elastica, a band that famously never ripped off music from other bands

I am playing “Waking Up” now and there’s a tenuous melodic connection? The Lush song has a lot more energy and a better chord progression.

You made it sound like Lush did a Porto-Blurred Lines on Elastica when it’s more like a couple of guitar bands with female vocals used the same melodic line cliche

Dammit

PROTO

Yeah I don’t think lush strayed that far from where they already were there, they just laid off the chorus and fuzz, eg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGVzyby5kcU

really loving everyone's write ups on the parent round

Yeah I was looking forward to reading the blurbs in this one

I had never heard of Harry Chapin before today and now I find he's centre stage

Curious, how old are you, Alba, & where in the world do you live?

xp thanks to ILX I have learned things about Harry Chapin’s work that I might have been happier not knowing.

I'm early 50s and British. Probably just a blind spot

According to Google Trends data, UK interest in Harry Chapin is about a fifth of what it is in the US, fwiw. More popular in Ireland and Australia!

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=%2Fm%2F016z3r&hl=en-GB

He had one Top 40 hit over here: W.O.L.D. got to #34 in 1974.

I've heard cat's in the cradle plenty of times, nothing else I'm aware of.

xp thanks to ILX I have learned things about Harry Chapin’s work that I might have been happier not knowing.

― JoeStork, Wednesday, October 30, 2024 1:33 PM bookmarkflaglink

like this?

The Official Harry Chapin Thread

the only other song I've heard is the one I posted in the Music League, "Taxi", and at the time my dad sang it in person, I thought "how many fucking verses does this song have" - but now the context in which I revisited that video of dad singing it will always give the song a warm place in my heart even though it probably would never have otherwise.

This round seems the toughest for downvoting yet as whatever track you choose will more than likely have some emotional resonance for the nominator.

So apologies in advance

was ez for me 😎

downvote my dad's song all u want, just know he will shout "A FANABLA" at you from beyond, then thumb his nose at you

Congratulations to…. ME for winning the parents round lol.

Ok so now this simple league will be complete after this next round. I will send yall invites for the next league after a few days.

No presh to keep playing. If there’s some more room in the league I’ll post in this thread.

Shaka 🤙🏽

I fucked my chances of being able to choose round themes, but my experience of music league is that it’s best if you remain true to yourself, both in song selection and in voting & commenting. I stand by my choices.

Yes don’t play for points PLAY WITH YOUR HEART 🫡

I'm not sure we have 'road trips' in this country. The longest you could possibly drive for is about 14 hours. London to Edinburgh is six or seven. Does that count as a road trip? Anyway, the most fun I ever had listening to music in the car with friends on a long distance journey was trying to be the first to guess all the artists in intro introspection by osymyso. I was driving and luckily the roads were fairly quiet as it took a fair bit of my attention. Not really something to boast about!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRJVErS87PA

(This is not my actual selection)

Papa Likes It was a great round to start on - thanks all. Like ledge, I'm pondering what a road trip means to me. I'm just going to take it as good music to be in a car too.

to

Did not expect the visceral negative reactions to Cats in the Cradle lol

Oh well! I stand by the pick as my dad did love it, and his appreciation of the theme I think informed his attentive parenting. (And I still think it's funny as a pick related to parenting but ymmv) I figure with this stuff to always go with your first instinct and not play to the crowd, although I had no idea the crowd hates him lol

I said my piece on Cats in the Cradle on the league chat but I genuinely enjoy that song and also knew it was going to be targeted by the league for downvotes. I figured the same would happen for my pick but it’s not every day you get to post a world-famous recording done by someone you later shared a stage with.

I like “taxi” more, that one was new to me

I avoided making a comment on the tracks I downvoted but having been in the receiving end of it with mine, I actually preferred it when I could read why!

I loved both the Harry Chapin tracks, and was utterly baffled by the downvotes, but then he's barely known here in the UK and maybe he carries more baggage elsewhere?

Cat's in the Cradle has over time been seen as 70s schmaltz, and then it hit the airwaves again in the 90s when Ugly Kid Joe covered it, so Americans might just be sick of it.

(I like it but even I'm sick of hearing it by now)

Yeah, my high school history teacher tried to get us into Harry Chapin, so it's just forever uncool in a way that say, Fairport Convention (who I didn't grow up with), never will be.

I don't remember ever hearing it before, but I took against it instantly. Something cloying about it and I like a lot of 70s schmaltz

My dad was a fiend for 70s acoustic singer-songwriters so I got to hear it all, including Don MacLean deep cuts

i have an affinity for certain kinds of schmaltz but the tone of the lyrics (especially the DO YOU SEE!?! turn at the end) and chapin's voice really turn me off CITC. the little instrumental refrain is nice. and it was smart to write the lyrics from the perspective of the shitty dad instead of the son.

i'm thinking i might opt out of the next league, it's been really fun but i find the time crunch of it a little stressful

had to upvote Cat's in the Cradle, my kids are 9 and 7 and that shit makes me emotional now

There is something extremely special about watching an a capella group struggle their way to sing the CITC harmonies through stifled giggles while the soloist stares blankly into space, unable to remember a so glad lyric to the last verse

My child ...uh...came home
Other day
Mumble mumble
Bits of clay

Yeah I loved the Chapin tracks. Guess it's a matter of exposure. The really tough justice was done to the novelty track though, that was an instant hit of nostalgic joy

I expected the punishment I received. If I’d been playing to compete I would have chosen “Kodachrome” for my mom, but the writeup wouldn’t have been as keen.

Loved both the write up and the song itself for Gimme Dat Ding (i played it for my kids yesterday), and was a little surprised it did so poorly.
But I guess you've gotta downvote something, and schmaltz and novelty are easier to rationalize?

I love goofy old stuff like that, would never had heard it outside this league I imagine!

QUESTIONS - how do you guys want to do the next league? Was this too many people? Would more be too many? Was the amount of downvotes/upvotes ok?

More would be too many. 25 is already a lot. But it’s manageable for me. My previous league was smaller and tight-knit, so there was a lotta pressure to provide a decent writeup for every vote (and tbh that’s the best part of this game for me. I especially love the catty ones).

16 up is tight for 25 songs but I do like that it makes you make choices.

3 down is lots

25 is a good number, it's enough to have a good amount of diversity but not so much that I can't listen to the playlist a couple of times before voting. For upvotes/downvotes I don't really care too much, I think I can adjust to whatever most people think is good.

The downvotes aren't fun to hand out, but it seems like an essential part of the gameplay dynamic.

In fact, it'd be fun to see categories with rules on when you have to use downvotes (automatic downvote if you've ever heard the song before, automatic downvote if someone else picked a song in the same language, etc).

25 players is a lot. If there are enough people waiting to get in, maybe we should split the league in half?

The current formula works just right for me. It makes for tough choices, but in a good way. 25 players is also plenty.

Also, I think it’s OK to mix familiar songs with new discoveries, and given the geographic divide it’s different to know what is and isn’t familiar to others. Case in point: Blur’s Girls & Boys in the Britpop round. My first thought: urgh, not this obvious old cliche (in the UK, it’s uber canonical). My second thought, on working through the playlist: fair enough, it still has merit. Whereas the geographic opposite may well have been true for my Bobbie Gentry pick in the last round.

Oh for fuck's sake, thought I had an extra day for this

oh well, post it here for the slagging.

i'm happy with all the current numbers.

i mean i don't drive, my last serious road trip was in 2013 and it also literally represented the breakup of my marriage (we had agreed to break up but we had to make it back across Europe together first), of the few CDs we brought with us the most vividly burnt-into-my-mind are an Astronauts compilation and Wire's Send Ultimate. so in the spirit of a marriage and perhaps a world plummeting headlong to its demise down the Autobahn, here's https://open.spotify.com/track/2DstWDWEOUMeaVPHzZR8mx?si=86204d106040428a

^it's a shame, this would have done bits probably

This driving playlist is the best! So many good choices and new discoveries. You delivered once again ilm.

i mean i don't drive, my last serious road trip was in 2013 and it also literally represented the breakup of my marriage (we had agreed to break up but we had to make it back across Europe together first), of the few CDs we brought with us the most vividly burnt-into-my-mind are an Astronauts compilation and Wire's Send Ultimate. so in the spirit of a marriage and perhaps a world plummeting headlong to its demise down the Autobahn, here's https://open.spotify.com/track/2DstWDWEOUMeaVPHzZR8mx?si=86204d106040428a

― imago,

This is a sad song for a sad story. Shame you didn’t make it in time to participate. While it doesn’t quite work as highway music for me - I usually like my highway music to be either soft and textured or repetitive, so I don’t get too distracted, and this is neither - I would have voted for it if only because it challenges what road trip music is.

Aw :)

I'm dutifully listening to the playlist...might post some takes...albeit unable to see the write-ups. Feel like this round is a bit less story-dependent (he says, having made his own quasi-submission entirely dependent on the story)

weirdly this is my favorite round of songs yet, and yet most of these would NOT work for me on a road trip (a lot of them are so relaxing to me they'd contribute to me feeling sleepy). still voting on the quality of song only, but it is kinda fascinating because people's needs on a road trip are so different, so that is why this round is fun.

Oh FFS. It's put the wrong song in from me (which I'm prepared to admit was user error as did it quickly in Tenerife airport yesterday)

now having fun trying to predict which one is yours

I tacked on that Astronauts track to the end of my playlist for this. Will give it an imaginary up or down vote.

It's the right group but not even from the same album xp

Think it's Spotify's search engine as it's the next track that comes up when you put "Group Track" into search and I guess my fat fucking fingers then clicked the wrong one

Bollocks

This playlist has 3 tracks that were, at various times of my life, my favorite song (one of them being from the Muppets, which I have not heard in at least 3 decades).

It messes with my mind that the playlist concludes with a song from Nebraska, followed by a song whose album cover is a solid imitation of Nebraska

Yeah the fake Nebraska album cover after the real Nebraska one made me chuckle when I was playing it.

Playlist contains one song that I can’t seem to find via Tidal (unit moebius track), though they have every other EP in that series. Also Tidal’s search function is terrible, when looking up the Dave Dudley song it suggested a re-recorded version on an Outlaw Country comp with a stars-and-bars cover.

Here you go: https://bunker-panzerkreuz.bandcamp.com/track/panta-rhei

Thank you!

You won’t be saying that by the 16th minute tbf

Im gotta be honest I'm loving the uk interpretation of a road trip song

Should have a side vote here on most outlandish interpretation of a road trip song

Is the US vs UK thing something like "we're doing this for days, let's make it loud & fun!" vs. "we're doing this for hours, ugh, let's hypnotise ourselves to get it over with asap"

I just interpreted the category as stuff I enjoy listening to while driving long distances.

if you're going to drive for days, you're going to need both loud and fun and hypnotising at various times

You just made me realize that honest answer would have been to submit a podcast episode in this round.

Lol

Three new excellent discoveries from this playlist, very glad I joined the game.

this playlist is all over the place but I love it

lol @ the last two tracks lining up like that

Should have nommed Kraftwerk - Autobahn. This was a cool idea for a playlist - all of them were really good ideas tbh - we should revisit the “road trip” one somewhere in the future, it’s an interesting concept.

I nearly chose Neon Lights

A reminder that today is the deadline for voting this round. Guessing voting is mostly slower just because the playlist is so much longer, plus the eventful week I guess.

Loving the fact there's a 17 minute track here and it's not even in the top 3 longest tracks

i hate it!

Virtual points allocated as follows:

tunnels - 1 - "motorik mainpop? allow it"

It's All Over Now (Baby Blue) - 2 - "has the woozy dazed quality of many a childhood drive, snuck up on me"

Where You Go I Go Too - 3 - "a really obvious choice but I love it too much to not give it full marks"

At Sea - 2 - "guessing this is our winner. gets points as much for not being the previous two songs on the playlist as for being a banger"

Pantha Rei - 3 - "another woozy trip, this time at night. absolutely excellent. love it when bobbins cru present me with the pick of the crop without me having to check everything out"

Don't You Know - 2 - "delightful. have another talk with God"

This Tornado Loves You - 1 - "quite lovely"

Detox - 2 - "yeah this goes hard. angry drive! raaah!"

A Yellow Robe - 2 - "I had worried this wasn't really going anywhere for a while but then some really cool noises happened and we all had fun"

There was loads I really didn't like this time. If it wasn't mentioned above, I probably mean yours! Sorry! Maybe your write-up recontextualises it well!

remember playing the Stones for an entire road trip and managing to be one of the few where I didn't stop for fatigue, they just kept me engaged album over album

was a 9 hour trip too

best entire discography to listen to while on a trip would be a fun poll

I did that once with The Kinks (it was only a 7 hour trip though), just one Kinks album after another, idk why I just really really liked the Kinks that day

None of the tracks listed in the In Praise of Moody Midtempo AOR thread appeared on our road trip/drive list, but I appreciated the fact that so many of the songs were totally new to me

Also, I have to throw some positivity to imago, who had one of my favorite ILX posts ever about the Yes song "I'm Running". I too have thought a song was written specifically for me (in this case Jay Som's "Baybee")

Well done everyone, that was fun and definitely have some new keepers.

And I'd have downvoted Living Next Door To Alice too

This was the song I meant to choose which I like to think would have done slightly better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMZTwSh5iCg

Another great ground. Congratulations to _space and to Moka, league-winner.

One thing I like about this game is that it makes you realise not everyone knows everything. ILM and most other parts of internet music discussion leave you with the impression that you're usually playing catch-up with everyone else, cause there's a cognitive bias that makes you pay attention when people are speaking up, and not notice when they start quiet. So, I was a bit worried that This Tornado Loves You was too obvious a pick, but then I find that Dan and ledge barely know Neko Case and were pleased to be introduced to the song. That's very nice

Round not ground. I seem to have a problem typing round - on my Autechre comment I did it as road

Interesting that Mike A (like me, before I checked) assumed the Anemic Boyfriends were current

"Say quiet" not "start quiet", above. When will I learn to check what I type?

Ha ha, not yet, obviously. I meant "stay quiet"

Shout out to the 17 minute hypnotic bleep voters - somehow managed to stay out of the bottom 4 despite only starting in round 3.

That Lindstrom epic was a great pick, hadn’t given him much attention beyond ‘I Feel Space’ so looking forward to investigating further.

Definitely up for another game if there is one, great way of discovering music :)

Check out the whole album Willl. Three tracks, 55 minutes lol

His collaborations with Christabelle and Prins Thomas are all great too

I'm not picking songs to score points, but on the other hand I do have a strong competitive streak and a pathetic need for validation, so... thank you, I am honoured to take the silver. And congrats Moka, you totally bossed it.

What happens next?

Again! Again!

Sorry I didn't throw Roundabout any points, ftr it's one of the songs I didn't dislike! But, it has been heard aplenty....

also, h/t Prefecture B-)

lol Carnage Visors did about as well as I expected it to

thing is, I associate my youthful car journeys with no band more than The Cure, they were fundamental to my experience as a child music listener...but it wasn't Carnage Visors we listened to lol yeah

I belatedly thought of posting the entire Lovesext album but Spotify broke all the tracks out from each other rather than keeping it as one long track with multiple songs in it the way the CD was

i mean i'd have probably thrown it a bunch of points if you'd managed to do that

Oh, that other Smokie track is loads better than the one you actually posted.

I'm pretty shocked that the Muppets outperformed the Cure, but it's been a surprising week.

The Cure treated their fanbase's concerns with contempt – of course they ran into the arms of the Muppets

I would’ve give Carnage Visors at least 2 points probably… sorry, wasn’t able to vote this round

What happens next?

- we will take a little break and I’ll invite yall to the next one. No pressure to join.

- top 3 get to pick the next leagues rounds.

Ooh, incentive

I really dug Carnage (pron. “Carnegie” IIRC) Visors, DJP! It could have been an hour long and I would have liked it even better.

The most fascinating part of the league is learning how little i really know about the U.K.'s music scene in a mass-culture way.

I know that I should not be surprised that the raw amount of stuff that found its way over here, either in the mainstream or indie/undie world, is wildly exceeded by what y'all encounter on the day-to-day that basically nobody in the U.S has heard or ever will hear. But it still feels like i'm being exposed to a parallel universe when reading multiple players all make the same "who the fuck is Alice?" comment, and I'm "what are you talking about?" Like record store dreams, where you are flipping through bins of nonexistent albums that your subconscious has created at that moment.

It reminds me of when Kermode and Mayo made some joke about a '70s (?) song I'd (and I'm guessing 99.9% of Americans) never heard before called "Dancing with the Captain" that sounded like a remarkable deepfake of the cheesy side of California yacht-rock, but it must be a real song, right?

Anyway, keep it up, as this league has been an amazing cultural lesson.

Like record store dreams, where you are flipping through bins of nonexistent albums that your subconscious has created at that moment.

Congrats to league winners!

1. MOKA
2. MIKE A
3. GROOVY PANDA!!!

Winners, please send me an email at chakifunkwizard@gmail with FOUR round ideas for the next league! WOOHOOO!

https://i.imgur.com/d5tg94e.png

1) songs about butts

2) Songs that end up in a very different place than they started

3) Most annoying song (more annoying = more points)

4) Best song that no one on this list has heard before
5) Song by the last band you saw live
6) Late career unexpected gems

Ha, one of the above was already going to be one of my suggestions!

awesome, I'll get my butt songs ready

Congrats winners!!!! Fun times

Hey!! Thanks everyone! Wasn't playing to win and I think I honestly just got lucky by winning the first round. I thought the rest of my picks wouldn't be that well received but was pleasantly surprised they did ok and loved reading your comments on every result. Found some great new music along the way too.

I think I'm not very good at picking good ideas for a playlist but let's do this. I have 2 ideas which aren't mindblowing but could produce some good playlists and I'm thinking doing a genre specific one too (as round 3: britpop was this first time).

Might steal one of these suggestions tbh. I like some of the ideas so far.

Just mailed my suggested rounds through.

Ditto

Just waiting on Groovy Panda - if they aren’t into
It I’ll ask the next winner etc

*rubs hands in 13th place*

What happens next?

- we will take a little break and I’ll invite yall to the next one. No pressure to join.

- top 3 get to pick the next leagues rounds.

― kurt schwitterz, Friday, November 8, 2024 10:39 AM bookmarkflaglink

I hope I don't miss signups for the next round (if any open spots are available, that is)

Just waiting on Groovy Panda

Sent my suggestions yesterday morning. And you replied lol 🤷‍♂️😂

Actually just checked and it was Saturday morning

oh ok! Mike I didn't get yours can you send again?

That's weird - it must have gone straight to your Spam folder. I'll try again now.

Got it!

Let me know if you all got an invite to the new league!

I did not

I didn’t either

I re- sent them.

VC - it won’t let me invite you so join here!

https://app.musicleague.com/l/638d683609f34eed8a068fd01442395c

I did

Got it that time

NOTE: Two of the winners picked a "covers" round so I made the executive decision to add the sibling round

thanks kurt! just joined

NOTE: Two of the winners picked a "covers" round so I made the executive decision to add the sibling round

― kurt schwitterz

lol, that was a last minute thing. I was thinking of proposing instead a "teenage self-portrait" round where you'd have to pick songs you loved when you were 13-15 and Mike picked a very similar idea with the "child's play" round.

I don't think I've got an invite - where should it show up? I checked the music league page and the email account associated with my Spotify account.

Oh sorry, I missed the link above. Have joined now.

Open to newbies?

Joined using that link cheers

There's still seven slots open, can anyone join or is it just for people who played the previous league?

Let’s wait for the previous rounds players to join first then I’ll announce if there’s any empty spots here.

To those that have not submitted yet - PLEASE WAIT UNTIL EVERYONE HAS JOINED! We don’t want to get it started too early

OK, thanks! A large league can be unwieldy, but this one has the ILM engagement a lot of the other leagues don't have. Would rather have a commented -1 than an empty +1.

I'm in, thanks!

I'm in!

Oh sorry, I didn't see that we were supposed to wait.

Who is missing

Let me check

Still missing:

hetdronkenschip
naamme
Kallen Law

I'd just post the link here and open it to anyone who wants to join at this point

I’ll give em til end of day the day 😁

I show your post at 10:38 PM, so is that another hour and a half?

im in hollywood baby

UK server's time, my bad. :)

One open spot! Come join the gang!

https://app.musicleague.com/l/638d683609f34eed8a068fd01442395c

The next round might be a tough one for me, it's not a genre name that has ever shaped the way I think about music, I'm not sure I've ever even come across it outside of ilm.

is it just a sound, or an era? would tracks from the 90s or later count?

Yes lots of PowerPop from the 90s like teenage fan club but it’s prime was 70s/80s

If you believe pitchfork:

Why has no one thought to better organize the institution of power pop? Ever since Big Star chimed in with their #1 Record, bands of all stripes—the pop group with a shreddy guitarist, the pivoting mid-career punks, the shoegaze band going sober—have gathered loosely under this jubilant banner to pay tribute to broken hearts through hooks and harmonies. At some point, an intrepid fan could have borrowed from the various committees that oversee ska and emo and split power pop into waves, or at the very least adopted a post- or a nü- prefix along the way to divide a genre that’s collected bands since the Nixon era, from the Raspberries to the Go-Gos to Superchunk to the New Pornographers.

And looking ahead to R3, I'm assuming "songs that make you feel cool" is implying ones that make you feel hip/down with your fellow kids rather than literally cold?

Also loving that this league will still be going into next year

Groovypanda: yeah it’s not music about cold temperatures but that might be interesting as a concept tbh.

I guess everybody has a different definition of what would make somebody feel cool. For me it isn’t necessarily music that makes you feel hip with the fellow kids, but rather music that hypes me up when trying to achieve something. Music that makes me go “I’m totally going to nail this”.

I’ll give an IRL example: back when I was in highschool there was a semester where T. Rex was the artist that always made me feel like the coolest mf when listening to it. Twice when I was vibing to it while listening on my headphones, I was asked what I was listening to and when I gave them the headphones they definitely didn’t make me feel hip. It was more in the line of “moka, this is lame, why are you listening to this old people music?”. Didn’t stop me from feeling cool when listening to it.

The way certain hip hop music makes me feel tough while driving and I'm probably the least tough person of all the people I know. Or how certain electronic music makes me feel hedonistic and reckless but I'm actually a very self-governed person.

Great posts. Thanks Moka :)

Waiting on 4 people and the round starts in 15 hours! Get your songs in!

We got room for one more player! Come join!

This playlist's great. So eclectic!

Was the maximum votes limited to two per track last time? Honestly can't remember

it was three i think.

and only two downvotes this time around.

Only two? Nooo

And wait, I can't just whack 3 points on something either? This is terrible

Surprised, and pleased, there's no duplication of artists on the Crowd Pleasers playlist. Nice mix of general crowdpleasers and the less obvious

Interesting to see what's (for me at least) aged well or badly here

Would be nice to be able to give some tracks 3 points to distinguish them more xps

Some tracks/artists I was expecting but quite a few surprises too

Agreed, max 3 upvotes would be better. I thought the mechanics of last round were bang on.

I imagine the mechanics are already set for the entire 12-round tournament, so maybe we should stop whining about it, but... why limit the upvotes at all? If someone wants to spend all 18 points on a muppets song, shouldn't they be allowed? limiting upvotes will just flatten the results.

Yeah, limiting downvotes probably fine but not allowing 3 points means voters having to find songs to, possibly reluctantly, give points to, and it also means that extreme enthusiasm can't be registered as a vote

Vote mechanics can be modified each round iirc.

yeah, it's not a huge deal but the 3 votes per track thing was pretty good I think, basically made me separate the tracks I liked into three separate tiers which is a good way of ranking things for me.

It would be kind of funny to invert the upvotes and downvotes

Like, you have to 20 downvotes to distribute but 2 upvotes, how does that change the way you evaluate the songs?

ill add the extra votes!

It would be kind of funny to invert the upvotes and downvotes

Like, you have to 20 downvotes to distribute but 2 upvotes, how does that change the way you evaluate the songs?

If I ever pick a theme, I would be tempted to do a "Songs you like but everybody else hates" round, and having more downvotes than upvotes would be useful there

Apologies for repeating what I wrote in the chat: I got the playlist this morning, and it says the votes are due tomorrow. Is there a way we can add an extra day or two for voting? There's a bunch of songs that are new to me, and want to give them their deserved attention/assessment.

I say don’t overthink it, it’s fine and in fact encouraged to make a snap judgment you immediately want to second-guess

Just my opinion though

that 'tomorrow' is misleading too, it's 16 dec 8am utc - so in 34 hours.

It says votes are due by 8am Saturday (UK time) so still 34 hours left. Not sure you can tweak that (like you can the votes) one the "pace" of the league is set

tell me I'm killfiled without telling me I'm killfiled

lol

the "pace" of the league! haha!

Oh, that's better - I have until Saturday morning Central time US. Thanks for the heads-up!

2am us central time, yep.

I'm a bit all over the place in this round with my rules of awarding points, specifically on how it's affected by how well I know the song already. I guess there's a bit of a bonus for tracks that are new to me, but I'm still giving two points to at least one all-time fave.

Ok lol at the point total for big and rich

No spoilers!

eep sorry

A worthy winner

In all seriousness, can we please try not to shitpost, it drains the precious commodity of people's downvotes. I say this as someone who posted some electronic noise to the funk round, zeal of the converted etc

I don’t think there was any sort of stylistic violation in this round. You go back to the original thread and there is so much breathless adoration for that nonsense, it’s completely valid to put that song up as an example of the type of thing a vocal contingent of ILM would go apeshit over.

I didn't even think of it as a shitpost, seemed entirely fair enough to me!

I mean this is a league where people are posting 28 minute songs on a 25 song playlist - anything goes!

In a minute we'll find out what I was actually rude about

*shakes fist* MOKKKAAAAA of COURSE it was you STOP BEING SO GOOD AT THIS

Moka is the secret beating heart of ILM, apparently.

Surprised how many people were familiar with Loose Booty only from samples — feel like maybe bringing the original to light for them was doing God’s work a bit.

This was a fun round. Sorry again for spoilers I just got excited.

Lol, sorry :(

I’m currently travelling and didn’t have enough time to comment on my votes but liked this round a lot!

Looking forward to the power-pop round! It will make a good highway playlist.

Less than 30 minutes to submit your songs for the next round

ugh, lame, was busy this weekend and didn't realize we had so short a window :/

My first choice for this round was "Hanging on the Telephone" by the Nerves but that is not on Spotify. I was gonna write a thing about how I weirdly heard this way before ever hearing the Blondie version, which was a result of me exploring music in the message board/napster era where stuff like that Nerves EP was being passed around.

I can't stop thinking about power pop

this round has certainly made me think about certain songs and bands and even other genres in a new way.

A.D.I.D.A.P.P.

Omg I just asked ChatGPT what that meant and it worked it out

(I don't know the advertising campaign)

I told it it was right and it said:

"Glad it hit the mark! Power pop fans do tend to dream big—catchy melodies have that effect!"

all day I dream about peepee

I think I have a new favourite album of [year], fucking hell

Some great tracks in this playlist. Bit gutted that my first choice appear on Spotify but no combination of words could make it appear on the mobile site to make it selectable.

*appeared

Yeah just listened to the full playlist - thank god for its brevity this time - and there’s not a single song I dislike. Some new favorites in there too. I have no idea on what to downvote.

Here's a tip: play the track on Spotify just before you click through to submit it to the league. It should then appear at the top of your "recently played" suggestions. This is how I always do things, just in case the wrong version pops up in search.

My faith! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose listening to power pop while knowing nothing of it, and I am the most obliged person in the world to you this playlist for telling me so.

xp I tried doing the ‘recently played’ thing as well but it wouldn’t show up. Either way, would have been ‘The Cardigans - Rise & Shine’ :)

Definitely the toughest round so far in terms of downvoting. Don't think there's anything I actively dislike, so will probably just spread them over my three least favourite tracks xps

Also, the dBs track is greyed out in the UK but is still on Spotify on other albums

It's a genre (of sorts) that I've historically loathed, at least the US alt-rock end of it. What's been exciting for me is that hearing it all together, it starts to make sense; I can get into its vibe. If I heard most of those tracks come up on Discover Weekly I'd still reach for skip, but the sum is greater than the parts

Glad to see [ redacted] doing well as I was also going to post a (different) song by that group but then changed it when it said someone had already chosen a song by them.

Ah, didn't realise it warned you. No wonder there have been so few doubled up artists in the rounds I've been in

does this thing make a public playlist? can someone link it for observers? :D

Here you go:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5rDrHHj2JkiwCY4gS2aJGn?si=LQ65FNrtRa-5jvbhV5Mmfw&pi=e-muhfnDUmRzS7

perfect thanks.. i'll see about linking it up/taking part later on

There’s an open league doing a round on meta songs that I just joined because I couldn’t resist it

https://app.musicleague.com/l/92a263793b884c949a3f387719fd16a7/

I'm in. Quite addictive this.

I joined an open league a few weeks ago and it was a bit of a disappointment tbh as the results weren't quite the discerning taste we've come to expect from the ILX leagues

I don’t think I could handle more than one league

wonder if fights break out in some leagues or if there's collusion

'the discerning taste' oho is that so

We did downvote “Save a Horse” into an oblivion from which Chaki can hardly expect to crawl back into grace, so yeah I think the taste is pretty OTM

i chose this life

8 hours left to vote! Remember the system punishes non-voters and gives you negative points.

Congratulations to our winner. Not sure if my comment on The Records got cut off or I just forgot to finish typing it, but no matter - you get the gist

We now have an empty slot in our league, I see

I'm wondering if there's a bug on the app as some of the tracks that had no write ups when voting now have one when you look at the results

Looking forward to the eclecticism of the next round

Feel like a bit of an idiot. The Waist And The Knees, Jimmy Still Comes Around or Years Of Wrong Impressions would have knocked out 20 points easy. Sorry Scott

Erica's Word YES OKAY

would have knocked out 20 points easy

not with my help!

i appreciate the double thumbs up from djp for both my 'deep cut from minor league uk 90s indie band' picks so far.

Room for one more if anyone wants to join late!

https://app.musicleague.com/l/638d683609f34eed8a068fd01442395c/

Looks interesting but it seems you need spotify to sign up and I'm not going to use spotify, sorry.

― John Backflip (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, 10 October 2024 18:37 (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

WHERE ARE YOUR PRINCIPLES GOOD SIR

also hi lol

my overriding principle is always "fuck it"

I'm wondering if there's a bug on the app as some of the tracks that had no write ups when voting now have one when you look at the results

when you make a comment with your submission it gives you the option of keeping the comment hidden until results, presumably like if it might give something away about who the submitter is.

i am humbled by that round. there i was riding high thinking i had found this forgotten obscurity that everyone would go gaga over and i ended up near the bottom, alas. trying to really ascertain the aforementioned "discerning taste" of our group, lessons learned... that said, i am all over the map deciding on my submission for this one...

I keep thinking I should go with something not quite as well-known every round but every time there's at least one person who hadn't heard my song and likes it, so I think I'll probably just continue going with what feels like the best answer and not go out of my way to seek out a hidden gem. Not sure this is a winning strategy though.

Lavator: For what is worth I had never heard the track or the band you submitted and I enjoyed it!

The top 2 was a bit surprising to me. When I saw The Beths and the dB's amongst the noms I thought for sure one of those two would be the winners.

Had no idea Throwing Muses were loved so much by the ilm crowd and frankly never thought of them as power-pop, but it works! They were one of my favorite bands at one point in highschool and it's been probably a decade or more since I heard any of their music. Having fun revisting them after all these years.

-

I think this next round has the potential to be a bloodbath as the concept of "cool" can vary wildly from one person to the next.

I'm definitely taking it to mean a soundtrack to feeling cool in a detached kind of way, not hip

xp thanks Moka!

Cool is a funny thing, it's a bit like zen - it's generally not cool to consciously think you're cool, so as soon as you become aware of it, you lose it. Some of the coolest music I can think of does not necessarily make me feel cool, because it comes from a paradigm so far outside my own, and I'd feel decidedly uncool to really absorb and identify with it while listening. But I suspect that's going to make this a very interesting round!

Now I just have this in my head (23 seconds if timestamp doesn't work)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vWHNwmzf1o

i appreciate the double thumbs up from djp for both my 'deep cut from minor league uk 90s indie band' picks so far.

That track ruled. I’d never heard it before but I will be investigating the album.

Btw you don’t have to pay for or stream the songs via Spotify, just have a free account. I’ve been making a playlist manually in Tidal.

Ugh i totally forgot about the non-Spotify picks this time, darn me.

Feel like this next one is a good opportunity to flex our music nerd muscles

although what’s nerdier than power pop (i say with no malice)?

My review of the Crocodiles album btw, in case any of the TEEEEEEEEAAAAAARS fans want to hear more: https://rateyourmusic.com/music-review/acoleuthic/the-crocodiles/tears/241212424

i'm already playing this in a league with friends, but i do wish i could see ilx's playlists

This was the Power Pop one:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5rDrHHj2JkiwCY4gS2aJGn?si=Yl-w4om0ToqZGcpr9L_uGw&pi=qr30uKZwRae_a

nice, ty!

And the more eclectic Round 1 (ILX Crowd Pleasers)

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0g5uq4lHl0AXqBZKmJIALl?si=p958vewnRPaFGLSUea0yIg&pi=MlYUKlWzSsySU

Round 3: Ice Cold (songs that make you feel cool):

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0GXyKJLyhiB2YEULWWJp1V

Some really cool choices. Loving this one.

I'm gonna be kicking myself forever for wasting my power pop submission on kitschy Jonny Polonsky instead of high octane heaters like Shoes or Flamin' Groovies.

Jo(h)nnys gotta stick together!

i wasn’t crazy about polonsky but i was glad to hear it and i added another song off that record to my big 90s power pop playlist compendium.

i think music league works for me because there’s the contrast between the obscurities and the stuff most people know very well, plus some conversation about both. it’s the closest thing to 90s college radio.

First listen and thinking this round I
will have absolutely no problems using all my downvoted

me neither but I'll still feel bad.

Votes for round 3 end in 14 hours.

I joined a 90s year by year one in which I'm enjoying nominating Disco Inferno tracks and no one voting for them https://app.musicleague.com/l/fe101fe35af74c5b868f91f97dd90e03

ML is a good "five stages of grief" process. WHY don't they vote for my music? They're FOOLS for not voting for my music. I can't believe this song didn't register! I will stay the course and stick to my tastes, and hope one person enjoys or finds out about this band.

Oh I get just the one stage, 'you fuckers' :)

Just 10 minutes to get your votes in Lavator

Site glitch mean final results with comments not available yet

Yeah, wondering if it's a timezone thing?

Voting still open but due in "minus 67 minutes" on the app for me atm

it won't accept the round is over until Lavator submits his votes

I think it's operating in reverse time for some reason

This music is so cool it's frozen the system

Save us Lavator

perhaps this is Moka's revenge

Someone said on the Music League subreddit that the only developer quit two months ago

So, is the app dead?

Well I guess if that's right then it's trundling along until something breaks badly

If I’m reading this right the last spotify update banned all mods apps which I suppose affects several external apps as well.

Can't see any sign so far of other people complaining about it being broken so maybe it's just ours that has got snarled up

Moka, I think that's the modded apk apps that basically let you have Premium for free xp

Maybe ours will be ok once Lavator votes?

Any way to force it to close, Moka?

the round, not the league.

Lavator is on the ML chat saying he'll vote within the hour if it lets him submit. It should have just docked points from his choice by now for missing the deadline so clearly broken in some way but yeah, maybe this will work to unjam it

Not sure of how it looks on the other side, or if the admin can close the round. I’ve never hosted. Kurt is hosting.

Lavator already voted I think. I see all 25 users voted but it doesn’t seem like his votes registered any points or that it closed the round.

Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Their points definitely registered as the top 3 have changed slightly

There's support info here if someone has time to contact https://musicleague.com/contact/

I am mad that this broke right when I saw this absolutely bullshit league that I am probably still going to join and troll the shit out of the person who created it https://app.musicleague.com/l/23f42c5124744b1fa85a51e9e5c128c4/

“anything but rap” foh with that, here is rap that matches every category you listed

5/50 players

We should all join lol

Lol saw that one and thought about trolling it too.

I'd like to thank my haters. Some of you gave my boy Harry Merry a downvote, and I want you to know, I forgive you, you played the game.

Some of you however gave Mr Merry two downvotes, and honestly, with so many lame ducks to choose from, there's no excuse, only ETERNAL BEEF

On a happier note, loved the Linda Smith tune (of those I'd not heard before), also gave max points to Clipping and Orbital

What was the song in this round that you wrote was one of your favorites of all time?

Out There Somewhere. it is part of the soul yknow

curious to know what spoon did to make people hurt them so bad.

https://www.reddit.com/r/musicleague/comments/1gzyn6q/playlist_wont_generate/

I think it doesn't help that they called themselves Spoon

I am sad that this broke

Me too… was looking forward reading comments on this round.

And also several ideas for the next rounds sounded very promising for discovering music.

In case ML dies for good, is there any similar thing where we could continue the league? this was fun while it lasted.

I've emailed.support and got this immediate automated reply. Not sure it's at all relevant in our case

Hi groovypanda,

Thank you for reaching out!  Also, sorry that you needed to... 

Music League has been growing and with that comes challenges we didn't anticipate. We are expanding our team as quickly as possible. For now, we cannot promise that we'll be able to address your concern as soon as we, and you, would like. 

But, we may have an easy(ish) solution. One that should solve missing notification issues for android and a number of smaller bugs:

If you are currently playing on our mobile app (from Apple's App Store or Google Play), we strongly recommend you 1) delete the existing app 2) download our "progressive web app" (from the link below). 3) Follow the prompts to add an icon to your home screen 4) register your existing account via Spotify (make sure you use the same Spotify account you use on the mobile app).

Start here: Music League

iPhone users click: "Play on iOS"
Android users click: "Play on Android"
Desktop/Laptop users click "Play on Web" 


Cheers,
Your Friends @ Music League

“anything but rap” foh with that, here is rap that matches every category you listed

― DJP, Tuesday, November 26, 2024 9:28 AM

In this round's EPMD track, I spoke about the excitement of MTV and emerging hip-hop radio of the era. But I also remember at least one radio station in the Lexington/Richmond KY area whose promos/bumpers would emphatically state that they played "ABSOLUTELY *NO* RAP!", which would be followed by a sound effect/parody of beat-boxing that resembled hyperventilation. This was 35 years ago! Silly of me to figure such attitudes had faded away, I guess

Stupid broken game!

The app was definitely being janky when I was trying to vote and add comments.

really hope this eventually works again, I have some good picks for the upcoming themes

but if it's correct that they don't have any developers working for them right now, it might take a while

Well I guess I can now divulge the song I wanted to choose for this round was Mos Def's "Quiet Dog Bite Hard," but because it's powered by Spotify instead of YouTube that was impossible. Happily it appears A Flock of Seagulls got no downvotes 😁

Oh I like that song and it’s missing from several playlists of my own because it has never been on spotify.

Gutted that this broke just as I finished a round with more than 3 points. Mine was Sylvester btw 👍

Yeah have seen a couple of posts on Twitter and Bluesky implying it's broke so don't think it's just our league

My first ever round! Yes I misunderstood the theme but I had a great on-topic choice for the next round. Still holding out hope that it will get fixed at some point, but it's dwindling now.

I had Sonic Youth - Stereo Sanctity, which nobody really seems to like as much as I do.

I gave 3 upvotes to the EPMD track if I recall correctly, overall I very much enjoyed this playlist

I gave Sonic Youth a point. It’s cool in my book.

I can’t remember if I gave a song more than 1 point. There were many good songs to pick from.

It will probably surprise no one that I was Clipping

I def gave SY a point.

I was the Spoon submitter. I regret nothing.

I think Spoon is one of the coolest rock bands from their era and I like Britt Daniel’s clothing style a lot. I’m not sure if I gave them a vote.

Looks like the results with comments are up now!!

It healed itself!

It was wild seeing my submission be placed as the opener for the playlist, knowing that it would be heard and scored totally in its own context. I can't get too mad about finishing so low, since basically every song I really liked won the top spots

I loved Molotov, it was a spectacular start to the playlist

Thanks! It was my favorite song of '18. You selection last round is usually in my vinyl collection, depending on when I last had a house party (on two occasions, a friend who hear "Breakout" loved it, then I have to give it to them!)

My other league is still in limbo.

That "like better than the original" part of the cover round is really stymieing a bunch of choices I'd like to make. Obvs there are some covers that are miles better than the original, but I'm having trouble thinking of any that would spark excitement from fellow players. I'm overflowing with covers that I like as much as the originals or in different ways from the originals.

Eh, I've still got a day to think about it and maybe I'll come up with something, but I may end up bending the rule about liking it better.

Great round - so interesting when tracks divide people. And I like Dan's (tennis-themed?) mixing up of Floating Points and Parquet Courts.

Hey we’re back!

yes! totally stoked we're back, it's the most musical fun I've had in some time.

very surprised at the winner - I gave it one point, it's good, but I've listened to it three times since it won and still can't hear any special magic in it.

Did Music League site just heal itself, or did Chaki have to do something to kick it back into gear?

i dint do shit

Should I extend submission time for this round?

I dunno, things seem brittle. If it was me, I wouldn't mess with the controls too much.

(incidentally, this near-death experience has actually given me a new appreciation for how fun music league is.
Live every round as if it's your last, folks!)

Only six people left to submit, I'd leave it

Four people left, 10 hours before closing.

My other league finally healed itself.

Anyone else nervous about the upcoming deadline?

Covers playlist

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6UtTLCYrCf0jU8wp4LKOYR

This is a tricky one because for about 50% of the picks I'm not familiar with the original, so will need to check that out first.

I think I only really know 9 of the 24 originals

Look I have just made this (playlist of originals and covers) and I hope you are all happy

Here is the Youtube playlist

difficult to find some, wish everyone had said in the blurbs who the original artist was, especially the one that had been translated into Japanese required a lot of detective work.

Stunning work, ty

Ah OK, I know rather more than I thought – thank you

Lol the all genres but rap league has begun and the top voted songs all have rapping.

Good job.

anthrax, ac/dc and white stripes are the non-rap tracks with the most points right now,

I was tempted by the Worst Music League of All Time but now I can’t find it, I think round 2 was just “podcasts?”

Anthrax has Public Enemy rapping in it tho

ah OK scratch that.

going to be curious at how we approach the instrumentals round there

Made a Spotify version of the playlist with the originals too. Has the right version of PSBs' All the Young Dudes unlike the YT one, but the Family version of Nothing Compares 2U isn't on Spotify so I've made do with Prince's version

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2bkBrGvzKU7bt5VXq4Yctj?si=5c5ae2ca66e2456f

thanks Alba, I will fix the PSBs track if you can share a yt link

Here you go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDy84XTbkw0

Ok, fixed that and "The Water's Edge" on the YT playlist

Lol the all genres but rap league has begun and the top voted songs all have rapping.

Good job.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Thursday, 28 November 2024 19:09 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Update: he's changed the description to "anything but pure rap" - one more push lads.

Haha YESSSSSS

I am 100% going for it in the pop song round

I tried to add We Want Some Pussy to that Playlist buy it wouldn't go through

I bet Me So Horny would go through, or Lick It or Short Dick Man

I joined this one, figured I might find some cool unfamiliar stuff there - https://app.musicleague.com/l/4f7b1843c532464fbc46a8f90340cfdf

Congrats to Ledge for winning the covers round and currently dominating the league at #1!!

I'm not cool enough to be in the ILX league, but I'm in a couple of other leagues and it seems to me that this game is less about gamifying your music taste and more about gaming the system so that you win. I had one round where you had to name the best rock song of the '70s and I nominated Stairway to Heaven, even though I don't like it all that much and I really think the best rock song of the '70s is The Last One by Les Rallizes Dénudés. But nominating that wouldn't have got me as many votes. Basically I nominate songs that I think are going to do well, not songs I like.

There's also that thing where you get obsessed with being the first to nominate a song before someone else, because it's considered bad form to nominate a song by an artist someone else has already nominated a different song by. So I end up poised over the keyboard waiting for nominations to go live so I can be the first to nominate a really obvious sure-fire vote-winner.

Wait, you guys are playing to win?

This is insane behaviour, anagram, and I respect it

I might try playing to win and see where it gets me

I've noticed that the most obvious 'winning plays' are usually not rewarded with the win in our league. You have to make the second or third most obvious play

picking music you want to share vs picking music you want to impose on other people, pick yr team.

second or third most obvious guy in the room, that's me!

picking music you want to share vs picking music you want to impose on other people, pick yr team.

― bad love's all you'll get from me (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 2 December 2024 10:50 (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is a specious distinction and I feel attacked!

when it's some cool AOR groove it's sharing, when it's Harry Merry it's imposition eh

the only valid distinction imo is 'play to win' vs 'play to show off some possibly obscure stuff i like' and ideally there's a middle way that incorporates both to an extent while matching the challenge aptly. i accept Harry Merry was entirely the latter, although losing even to Tame Impala wasn't the plan

Harry Merry track was awesome, fuck the haters

yeah the two are basically the same. playing to win and not picking music I even like would be like... why am I spending my time doing this?

You forgot “trolling” ie crashing a league with a “no rap” clause and submitting nothing but rap

trolling is eternal, trying to work out what to submit to his instrumentals round now.

You should try and submit some rap acapellas

The voice is an instrument if you think about it

I am absolutely submitting beatboxing

Really turned off by the cynical attitudes here, especially by people who aren’t even in the league? “Hey, guess what I’m not cool enough to be in your special group, and also what you’re doing is stupid!”. Okay, fine?

when it's some cool AOR groove it's sharing, when it's Harry Merry it's imposition eh

It’s fun to share music together but I guess we all definitely know psychopaths that look at it as a power game.

As far as I can tell, nobody here is playing to win, I think it would be a boring league if most people were, I think that sometimes the obvious choice is sometimes the thing that feels the most right though.

I guess that's mostly aimed at me? For the record, I certainly don't view what you're doing as stupid, it's just a different approach. For me, the fun of this is in getting as many points as possible, not in sharing or discovering music. If that makes me a psychopath, OK.

xp to brimstead

Lmao in that bullshit no rap league I didn't realize you had to submit two songs. That's why I can't get it to work.

Also lol

https://i.ibb.co/3Sn1nW8/Screenshot-20241202-102621-Chrome.jpg

I threw in Fuck The Police abd We Want Some Pussy

ahahahahahahahahahaha

yeah sorry for being snotty anagram, just seemed like a “why build anything other than a channel/fireball deck, you’ll win every time”, just not fun imo

sorry the only metaphors I know are related to Magic the Gathering

the only way to truly win Music League is to PLAY WITH YOUR HEART!

^^^^^ <3 <3 <3

https://app.musicleague.com/l/731964c9d1144ad0992c6f7f3d68cd14/

I just jumped into this league because I love the conceit

Speaking as someone that won the first league, I didn’t notice anyone submitting songs to win. I think the choices were overall very interesting and some of the concepts like “songs your mom or dad loved” even break the norm of how you’d even play to win a round like that. The blurbs in the ilm league are what makes it stands out than most leagues I’ve joined (and left).

I think everyone on this league could be described as a music nerd, so obvious choices might only work in very specific rounds. ilm does have a hivemind of its own but it’s sort of unique, so picks that might be obvious to ilm would make people in other leagues frown or ignore them.

I might have won the first league by consistency and getting a considerable lead in the first round, none of my songs in the subsequent rounds did that well. The system punishes users who submit and forget to vote and missing round will also make it very hard to climb to the top. So that plays into the consistency as well.

I'm still silently seething you'd all turned on Inspector Norse tbh

Hey I was never pro-Norse

I just wish he had done a whole album of chill stuff like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_6SZw_GUy4

(Terje)

Lol I kid you not “inspector norse” was one of the songs I was considering for that round. I Was shocked it wasn’t top 3 in the results.

i alternate between trying to pick something that imago loves and something that imago hates

just kidding, imago loves all of my picks

There's no user where I absolutely know who posted the song, except maybe chaki

Mike perhaps has a distinctive (and very good) writing style

Bless you for that. I do feel a bit mean about giving minus 3 to Harry Merry, but I did play it in full three times!

Yeah, I've enjoyed most of your picks lj but that one was most definitely not for me

All good lol

Anyway, let's see what your 'orrible younger selves did dig...

I would never be so cynical as to choose a track purely to try and win the most points. The fact that my favourite song as a 12 year old was Nina Simone's cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' is simply a peculiar coincidence

sorry, 'Suzanne', not Hallelujah

Wondering if I should judge these by what I'd have thought of them at 12, but that's pretty hard to reverse engineer

lol xp

Also might be mistaken but slightly dubious that 12 year olds were digging some of these selections *raises eyebrow*

(although haven't read the write ups yet so that might explain some of the choices)

I don’t know, this all scans to me

But also, by 12 I was very into a wild variety of stuff due to two older brothers and a father who were all extremely musically inquisitive; I used to play “I Zimbra” on repeat and almost picked it

the wildest pick there is something I was into aged 7, so I believe everything

Yeah looking at my generation at 12 and scanning the charts and albums released in that certain period of time I feel it’s a crucial age for discovering one’s own music taste. And if anyone in your generation had older friends, brothers, sisters your taste would be marked by music they were listening to as well. Particularly back then when the internet wasn’t a thing and music consumption was dictated by sharing mixtapes or watching mtv and listening to the radio.

The song I picked was in a goddam children’s movie, ffs

i had very 'adult' taste at 12 because my dad had kind of influenced my taste.

the first record he got me was Chicago - 19 lol

My first concert was Wild Cherry, Average White Band, and The Ohio Players.

I was 4.

Very much the opposite for me, my parents didn't really listen to music, I had very limited experience with music listening, if this had been for age 11 I probably would have had to select "G.I. Joe Theme Song" or something like that.

one day pop gave my brother and I records to use on my turntable, mostly stuff he had duplicates of, and it was all like Billy Joel, Santana, Jane Olivor, etc...

the first time I turned on the radio for myself so I could stop being bullied for not knowing radio pop, I was maybe 12 or 13. which is how I got heavily into Ace of Base lol.

metal didn't show up on my radar until like....late teens

No Rap League is open to voting, please lend your 3 points to Short Dick Man.

Lol

Fuck the police, jazzy jeff and short dick man at top 3. Beautiful.

League owner has used his sole downvote on We Want Some Pussy.

gave Short Dick Man 16 points. wrote "fuck this song" on REd Solo Cup and downvoted it

lmao the top 4 is all rap songs

No, Rap!

so yeah, you're not limited to 3 points, in this league you can use all 16 on a song apparently lmao

Short Dick Man has probably an insurmountable lead if someone else throws a 16 spot

I gave it something like 13 points

Lmao it's now 36 points ahead of that piece of shit Red Solo Cup

lol our league seems to be vmic

12 was about the age my very churchy parents began allowing me to listen to Top 40 radio. I'd been aware of things like Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna, Van Halen, ZZ Top, Weird Al, and various hard rock/hair metal bands and albums by listening at friends' houses, and that was where I saw the entirety of my MTV intake, but I was mainly limited to whatever I heard on local radio stations, in movie soundtracks, and Casey Kasem's countdown every Sunday after church. In fact, the first piece of physical music I ever bought was the 45 of "Who's Johnny" by El De Barge because my mom liked Short Circuit enough to allow it (a film which aged like milk).

Mrs HD & I have been rickrolling each other for 30 years with “Who’s Johnny.”

Oh no they onto us

https://i.ibb.co/0GMSPxq/Screenshot-20241204-172727-Chrome.jpg

I can’t wait until they show the vote totals

lol you're winning in that league now

someone in chat asking 'wtf is that song that won' lmao

Surely the league runner must know that it's being gamed from outside?

Have just chosen "French Kiss" for the instrumentals round, worried it isn't quite rap enough though.

I count at least 3 songs in the current round that were the last song on their respective albums (Murder By Numbers, Music Non Stop, Constant Craving), which is wild. Also reminds me, I need to change my handle

Almost immediately after joining the MOKA'S REVENGE league, I started a public side league open to 9 other randos. Definitely prefer a 10-player experience to a 25-player experience, not that I don't love all you guys. Maybe when this one concludes, we can split into two. Or not. Maybe I'm in the minority. :)

We can have promotion/relegation

😮

trouble brewing in the no rap league

(redacted) 07 Dec 2024 8:16pm

We have more than one troll in this group…



(redacted) 07 Dec 2024 8:16pm

See also: poop songs (with lyrics)



(redacted) 07 Dec 2024 8:16pm

can we get rid of the trolls please?



(redacted) 07 Dec 2024 8:31pm

@R44 there are a few non-covers toward the top (I voted for several and also submitted one). More frustrating that some of these have vocals or are obviously not serious submissions. 🙄

👍 1



(redacted) 07 Dec 2024 8:32pm

definitely curious how far into the songs people listened based on the winner so far though…



Stef P 07 Dec 2024 10:27pm

I second @(redacted) to remove trolls. How much time do people have on their hands.

I'll just come back as Bosom Manor

Googleproof names?

yeah good point sorry

Who does Paris Paloma's vocal style remind me of? It's bugging me. Is it AURORA, Lorde? Feel like there's someone else I know better than those two

My comment compared her to Olivia Rodrigo. Whether positively or otherwise, wait and see!

Ah, good shout.

I've joined an open Christmas league. Lots of slots left if interested

https://app.musicleague.com/l/ae6029ceeb1146fc800c162cb1037612

Welp, I have enjoyed my brief stint at the top of the leaderboard and graciously cede to whomever it was who had the good sense to not see any shows after The Cure’s tour last year.

I joined a Rave one but it appears to be full of EDM heads xp

Also lol DJP

don't think i have time for comments this week, so i'm just gonna grade on a jealousy scale. 1 will be mildly jealous, 2 will be very jealous, 3 will be "fuck you, should've been me," and the negatives will be "glad i saved the cash"

I thought this was the least interesting round so far, I got nothing against most of the picks but it was maybe a bit too constraining a category for it to be really interesting.

I thought it would be a good leveller: not a round that you could play to win.

I thought a bunch of the picks were very cool things I wouldn’t have actively pursued of my own volition

I was torn between wanting to vote for some of the greatest songs of all time and not wanting to vote for them because they were such easy wins, then wanting to vote for them again because that's just the last band someone saw. Have not voted yet but am always like 15th-20th out of 25 and positive this will be the case again, even though I have been foolish enough to once again pick a song I have an emotional relationship with.

I’m jealous of several picks in this round. Good taste in live music. I’d pay good money to see several artists in here if they were performing near me.

Everyone really decided to kick LJ’s assertion about the correlation between votes and place on the playlist squarely in the nuts this time, huh

not as much as they're kicking in the nuts mike's assertion that this isn't a round you can play to win ;)

Pleasantly surprised to see how well my pick is doing. I feel bad about my low-effort comments and vote distribution this time around but I’ve just had it this week and I wasn’t wowed by a lot of the new-to-me stuff on the list; some v talented musicians but a lot of it seemed very Tumblr somehow. Nothing wrong with that, but I don’t connect.

Finally reading the CocoRosie threadbump. On a fateful collision course with our forthcoming sibling band round

I hope we're all feeling slightly ashamed right now lol

"oh I haven't been to a gig in 5 years but here's one of the best songs ever"

Also, since DJP posted that flimsily spoilered statement, matters have dramatically 'self-corrected'. Not that I'm accusing a correlation, of course :p

maybe i should have gone for the more obvious pick of geno.

if anyone picks taylor swift or chappell roan next round i will consider downvoting even though i love them.