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

Thanks all. Can anyone remember how many upvotes we get? Is it 15?

And everyone ok with sticking with 3 downvotes or should we up it? *laughs maniacally*

It's 15 yeah. You can push downvotes to 4 at most I'd say

Do you have to use all of your upvotes/downvotes by site design or is that a league setting?

Optional downvotes would be good, yeah, if possible

You do yes.

You can choose how many upvotes/downvotes everyone gets and also how many are allowed per track. We've previously allowed a max of 3 upvotes per track (and 2 downvotes) but we could up that to 4/5? if people want to mix things up a bit?

I'll have a look but I think it's either on or off for dv's xp

A max of 4/5 upvotes for a single track would be a better experiment than massively increased DVs maybe!

Ok. Will leave downvotes as is and increase upvotes to 20 and up to 5 per track. We can always switch it back for future rounds then if we feel it's not working

Submissions will go live next Tuesday and a heads up that the first round is simply 2026 tracks so everyone can start thinking about what to select.

I would be up for more microgenre rounds.

Or, even fairly broad genre rounds tied to a date range, e.g., pick an electronic song from 1990-2000, a country song from 1970-1980, etc.

gp, you have mail.

Pick an italo disco track from May 1983

Did everyone get the email about the community engagement bait

I did not!

Hey Music Leaguers!

As we get closer to launching v2.0 this summer, we’re keeping the fun rolling and tunes flowing with a new kind of community-wide challenge.

Welcome to the Weekly Summer Challenge!

For the next 6 weeks, we’ll announce a new theme every Thursday by email and push notification. Create a league with friends, play the week’s theme, and each qualifying round becomes an entry into the week’s prize drawing.

Week 1 Theme: One of the best songs you discovered playing Music League

How to enter

Create a new Unlisted (Private) league named: Weekly Summer Challenge

Invite at least 5 players, including yourself.

Set the league pace to Steady or Accelerated. This is required so rounds end on the correct weekly deadline.

Leagues set to Speedy will not qualify. For the same reason, admins cannot move a league forward at any point prior to its scheduled deadlines.

Add this week’s theme as a new round. So for Week 1, name the round title “One of the best songs you discovered playing Music League.”

Set the round’s voting close deadline to Wednesday, at 11:59pm (the app defaults to your local time zone).

Make sure all players submit a song before the round closes.

Rounds still qualify if not every player votes.

You can play as many or as few weeks as you want. Each completed weekly round is its own entry into that week’s drawing.

To make it easier to add themes every week, you may want to add five rounds after Round 1 as placeholders that you can update every Thursday.

Weekly cadence:
📅 New theme drops every Thursday shortly after 10am CDT
🏆 Winners are drawn each Wednesday after that week’s voting deadline
📣 Winners are announced by screenname in the Thursday theme email (and notified individually)

Prizes:
Each week, we’ll randomly select two League Admins from different qualifying leagues.

Each winner receives:
🎁 1 year of Music League Premium
👕 A Music League t-shirt in Grey or Purple in your size. View here

That covers it!

The community’s engagement here will directly shape whether and how challenges become a real feature in Music League. We’re inspired to see what you come up with!

Questions? Email conte✧✧✧@musiclea✧✧✧.c✧✧.
— The Music League Team

P.S. Our other active challenge, The League Starter Challenge, is still open for submissions through June 4th. For details, click here.

pick an italo disco track from 1953

ILM 7 - Classic or Dud?

Thanks for all the suggestions. Everyone's got at least one of their round suggestions. Submissions live now and first playlist will drop end of this week.

Come join us

wooooo!

Thanks groovypanda, looking forward to this

Looks like a pretty short turnaround between League creation and first submission. Hopefully we get a few more players.

Yes, more people ought to stop yammering on about great American songwriters and join this!!!

I don't bite in the comments! Much!

i for one will attempt to submit only tracks by the 30 greatest living American songwriters that I imagine would be acceptable to both Whiney and D-40

lol xps

I can push it back a week if people want? We're up to 12 now and there's still 48 hours left to submit so hopefully we'll have some more join anyway.

Not a bad round idea. Submit a song from one of the nyt 30 greatest living American songwriters

Much harder to figure out if there's a songwriter living or dead "acceptable to both Whiney and d-40"

better idea would be 'greatest living american songwriters' without reference to the nyt list

wait are we finally getting user ufo in this

yes oh excellent

i did music league with some acquaintances who have mostly terrible taste so i really need some relief

[insert imago looking at the camera like jim in the office]

Just over 13 hours left for any stragglers to join in time for the first round

https://app.musicleague.com/l/bce29a613a8c4a3f869602831a40b221

i haven't been active on ilx recently but have wanted to do one of these for ages so hope you don't mind me joining a little late

go for it!

Anyone got a link to the playlist, the site isn't loading for me.

I knew if I posted that it would sort itself out in a minute.

enochroot - we've just finished the summer edition of music league. if you're back from your travels now do you want to set up the next one?

very fun. thank you for putting this together and letting me be a part of it

Sure, I could pick it back up.

I saw some creative prompts in that last round - I hope you all saved some ideas, because I'm running low (send them to me via ilxmail).

How long of a break do people want before the next season?

Thanks groovypanda for running the last one, enochroot I've sent some ideas. I don't really mind how long a break, maybe a couple of weeks?

Submitted some ideas myself! Not sure if any have been used in the past, I just finished my first ML

Also shout out to Mike for doing the Lord's work in creating (and keeping updated) this spreadsheet of every single song submitted to the ILM Music Leagues:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CRbdRrwJBIrtQ_canJBeDOp_xb6TKm1m

cosign!

that spreadsheet is wild out of context haha. fun to see the repeat artists we use. very nice. thank you Mike. I consult this sheet a lot in the league as I assume many do

Artists who have had > 3 songs submitted:
The Cure 7
Aphex Twin 5
clipping. 5
Autechre 4

Artists who have had 3 songs submitted:
Al Green, Aretha Franklin, Blondie, Boards of Canada, Buzzcocks, Chavela Vargas, Cocteau Twins, Coil, Daft Punk, Depeche Mode, Digital Underground, DJ Shadow, Dolly Parton, Fairport Convention, Genesis, Hot Dad, Laurie Anderson, my bloody valentine, Orbital, Pet Shop Boys, Prince, Saint Etienne, Sonic Youth, Steely Dan, Stereolab, Stevie Wonder, Talk Talk, Underworld, Vangelis, XTC, YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA

Oh wow, Hot Dad. I think they were all submitted in the first league we did and I don't think I've thought of them since.

Also thought King Gizzard had at least 3 but maybe they're missing because they're no longer on Spotify?

Sent a bunch of ideas to your gmail, enochroot

The new league will start in a week:
https://app.musicleague.com/invite/0953fb512ddd482db00e424eb2fd06a3/

I followed the conventions of the last league: 5 upvotes max per track, 2 downvotes max (the total number of votes will depend on how many players sign up).
We'll do a steady weekly cadence - submissions due Thursday, votes due Tuesday.

Thanks for all the ideas for prompts.

:thumbs up emjoi reaction:

Sweet, thanks