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

I bowed out of the ILM leagues after one season of play (the topics got too granular, sorry), but if anyone's around at about 8AM EDT I've been doing a "shuffle roulette" league 7 days a week for the last several weeks. It's most fun when you don't fudge it and actually submit the first track that comes up in your shuffle.

Anyone else having trouble with ML today? When I opened it in my browser like usual, the ILM league wasn’t showing. So I tried to log out and back in, however, it’s saying my Spotify login is not recognized. I tried downloading the app but got a login error with it, too. Hopefully this is just temporary…

If someone could share a direct link to this week’s playlist, I’d be grateful. I can at least start listening (sans blurbs).

i think it’s just glitching today. having the same issue here

Here you go xp

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/73ixuSC4jufhXTsHFonrWY?si=NqsswX2nQL-XOERpYkyDYQ&pi=j6atDQuAQbGAZ

(App is working fine for me)

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/73ixuSC4jufhXTsHFonrWY

App also working for me, at the moment.

Thanks for the link!

Alba one hour left!

this down for anyone else?

seems ok right now. but i just use the app

Congratulations to Season 4 winner, gman59, and runner-up, groovypanda!

Music League will be back in early September (new categories posted 9/2, first round will start 10 days later).

Enjoyed this "season" very much. I noticed the app does a recap. My biggest fan was enochroot (18 upvotes) and my biggest critic was Chaki, who gave me 6 downvotes (oof), many of which were comment-less. Justify your hate, coward!

Some of my favorite finds, in roughly reverse order (most of these, the artist was new to me as well as the track):
The Electric Soft Parade - "Silent to the Dark"
Novos Baianos - "Misterio do Planeta"
Melt-Banana - "Infection Defective"
Coen - "Headbanger"
K's Choice - "Not an Addict"
Tomberlin - "I'm Not Scared"
Ida - "Maybelle"
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich - "Hold Tight!"
Blaze Foley - "Clay Pigeons"
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - "Sense"
Lost - "The Gonzo - Original Mix"

I had a blast. Thank you for organizing this. Happy to contribute more round ideas for next time although I ended up doing terribly in my own 'pass the mic' suggestion.

Send your round ideas my way, gman (via ilx mail)

Done! Thanks for running this, enochroot.

I posted this in the ML chat, but in case it closes on us, re-posting here:

Thanks to y'all (most notably lj) for the entertaining call-outs in the comments sections to my submissions! I guess my status as the writer/selecter was a little obvious, as I am not adroit at masking my identity, or successfully employing different guises as well as most of you-uns's (another Kentucky 3rd-person plural I heard bandied about during my time there).

I look forward to the next edition!

I don't know how they do it, I usually don't have a clue! Except for lj's cacophonies sometimes.

(lol @ ur display name)

Lol, it was a pleasure. Ftr, user Prefecture has the most identifiable of all submission styles, although I'm probably not too far behind

so...we starting back up soon?

yes! i'm just back from vacation, so i'll get the new rounds posted today.

https://app.musicleague.com/l/a7418cdf2827411bb2fbdc72fd8f9f2a/

Yay! Moderately annoying I'll still have to use spotify for this, though I'll see if I can compile mirror playlists on qobuz.

I've been using soundiiz to just export the spotify playlist to my streaming service every round

free or with a sub?

the free version allows you to export up to 200 tracks per playlist, so that is more than enough for music league

Looking forward to the next round, was gutted to have to drop out so early in this one but life got way too busy.

I want to join again but am also way behind on 2025 music and feel like ML eats up about 50% of my listening in a given week. Not sure what to do...

Oh what the hell.. these categories are too good not to join!

Looking forward to nominating ‘Roll Out’ for round 6

I want to join again but am also way behind on 2025 music and feel like ML eats up about 50% of my listening in a given week.

This reminded me of a scene from High Fidelity:

he has heard most of the music in the shop, and would rather bring new stuff to work — tapes from friends, bootlegs he has ordered through the post — than waste his time listening to anything for a second time. ('Want to come to the pub for lunch, Dick?' Barry or I ask him a couple of times a week. He looks mournfully at his little stack of cassettes and sighs. 'I'd love to, but I've got all these to get through.')

Reminder for anyone who hasn't submitted yet -- there are about 2 days left until the new league kicks off.
(The deadline each week is Thursday night, 8pm EST, midnight GMT)

Less than 12 hours to go, still four stragglers!

Also, still 1 open slot, if someone wants to jump in.

Here's the Round 1 prompt...

ROUND 1
Computer Blue: The profound melancholia that can emanate from the seemingly cold heart of the machine.
Electronic sounds that transcend their programming to achieve maximum pathos.

(if you've got the perfect answer, you can sign up at https://app.musicleague.com/l/a7418cdf2827411bb2fbdc72fd8f9f2a/, but you will need a spotify account)

Alas, I've had to duck out of this league - very, very reluctantly, but the next couple of months are going to be exceptionally time-consuming work-wise.

Alas, me too! Life just too hectic

Looking at the criteria of this edition's rounds, we'll really miss y'all's rad tunes, evocative stories, and entertaining comments!

Yeah too bad! Though less chance of paul mccartney now :)

Playlist on Qobuz if anyone else is on there, just missing Kraftwerk: https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/36822949

(added kraftwerk)

Just seeing this now. did I miss the deadline to join?

ok joined. wow totally missed all this lol

7 hours left and 4 users have still not submitted!
Get on it this is gonna be a good round!

If anyone wants to play in another league I have a few spots in my personal one! Should be short and fun!

https://app.musicleague.com/l/640301d3cbaa4bcc92029f099c1fe6ee/

I am very sad to bow out, I clearly have not had the time to participate. The first 3 or so leagues were like a highlight of my year but came seem to fit it in. :( enjoy all!

*cannot seem to fit in

I bowed out of the ILM leagues after one season of play (the topics got too granular, sorry), but if anyone's around at about 8AM EDT I've been doing a "shuffle roulette" league 7 days a week for the last several weeks. It's most fun when you don't fudge it and actually submit the first track that comes up in your shuffle.

― ⓓⓡ (Johnny Fever), Friday, June 13, 2025 12:55 AM

Ayyyyy, groovypanda showed up today!

Lol. Had no idea that was yours JF