Joining an event as a guest

Joining

You need a phone with a web browser. There is no app to install and you do not need an account.

Your nickname

Your nickname appears next to every song you request, where everyone else at the event and the host can see it. Leave it blank and your songs show no name at all.

CrowdTune refuses nicknames with offensive words in them, including common disguises like repeated letters, digits for letters and letters spaced apart. If yours is caught, you are asked to choose a different nickname. A longer word with a blocked word inside it, like Scunthorpe, passes.

Long nicknames are cut to 64 characters.

Requesting a song

Use the box at the top of the event page. What happens next depends on the host's plan.

• With song search, results from YouTube appear as you type, with a thumbnail, the channel and the length. Tap one to pick it, then choose Add.
• Without song search, type the title and choose Add. Adding the artist's name helps, because the big screen looks the song up on YouTube when its turn comes and plays the top match.
• If search finds nothing or is unavailable, a short note under the box says so. You can still type any title and add it.

How many songs you can have waiting

You can have up to three of your songs waiting to play at once. Try to add a fourth and CrowdTune asks you to vote for other songs and come back once one of yours has played. Each time one of your songs plays, you get the slot back.

Adding a song that someone already picked from search does not create a second copy. You get the existing one, and it does not use up one of your slots. Vote for it instead.

The event as a whole also has a song limit, which depends on the host's plan. When the event is full, nobody can add more until the host lifts the limit.

Voting

Tap Vote on any song you want to hear. The button changes to Voted. Tap it again to take your vote back. You get one vote per song, and you can vote for as many different songs as you like.

The list is sorted the way songs will play. Songs the host pinned and songs moved up with play-next come first, marked Plays next. After them come the rest, most votes first.

Your votes are remembered if you reload the page, switch tabs or come back later from the same browser.

Your one play-next

Each guest gets one free play-next per event. Tap Play next on a song and it jumps ahead of the vote ranking, queued behind any earlier play-next picks. The /guides/play-next guide explains the rules, including the limit on how many can wait at once.

If the host has turned play-next off, the button is not shown and votes alone decide.

What the host sees and can do

• The full song list, with the nickname of whoever requested each song.
• Total songs and votes for the event, and how many voters have joined.
• They can delete a song, pin a song to play next, undo a guest's play-next, skip the song playing now, or turn play-next off.
• On a Teams plan, the host can also see who requested the most songs.

Reporting something

At the bottom of the event page there is a Report content link. Use it to report the event, a song or a guest name. You can report without an account.

Reports go to CrowdTune's operator, not to the host. If something is removed, the host is told what was removed and why, but never who reported it.

Before and after the event

If you scan a code before the event opens, the page tells you when it opens. Come back then.

Once the event has ended, the page says so and shows the songs that played. You cannot request or vote any more.

What data is kept

• Your songs and votes are stored with a temporary guest identifier, not your name or phone number. CrowdTune does not ask your age or anything else about you.
• Your browser keeps a random identifier for CrowdTune, so you stay the same guest at that event if you reload or change your nickname. The server keeps only a one-way hash of it combined with the event, so your visits to different events cannot be linked.
• Your browser also remembers which songs you voted for at each event.
• When you search, the words you type go to YouTube to find matches.
• Events, with their songs and votes, are kept for up to 30 days from creation and then deleted within a further 7 days. The host's end-of-night recap lists songs and vote totals and names no guests.
• The /privacy page has the full details and retention periods.

Questions