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Run a crowd-voted playlist at a house party

5 min readUpdated

Set up a CrowdTune event for a party at home: share the code, let guests request and vote, put the queue on a big screen, and get a recap afterwards.

What you need

You need a CrowdTune account, a screen with a web browser, and speakers. A TV with a browser works, and so does a laptop plugged into a TV or a projector.

Your guests need a phone with a browser. They install nothing, and they do not need an account or a streaming subscription.

The free plan covers a small party. Guests type song titles, and there are limits on how many songs and how many voters one event can hold. A paid plan or a one-off event pass adds song search and bigger limits for that night. See /pricing for what each one includes.

CrowdTune is for private events: your home, your guests, a party you are hosting. It plays music through YouTube, and YouTube's terms allow personal, non-commercial use only.

Before the party

  1. Sign in and open your dashboard. Choose to create a new event.

  2. Give the event a name your guests will recognise, such as the name of the person whose birthday it is.

  3. Set how many hours it should run. Leave the field empty and the event runs for six hours, which is also the longest a free event can run.

  4. Tick the box that says you have the rights or licences needed to play music at this event. You cannot create the event without it.

  5. Create the event. CrowdTune shows you a QR code, a six-character join code and a link. Choose Manage event to open the host console.

  6. Join from your own phone as a test. Add a song you are happy to hear first, so the screen has something to play when people arrive.

Getting guests in

There are two ways in. A guest scans the QR code with their phone camera, or opens the CrowdTune home page and types the join code. The code leaves out characters that are easy to confuse, like 0 and O or 1 and I, so a code read off a screen across the room gets typed correctly. Upper or lower case both work, and so does the code with or without the dash.

The QR code and the code are both on the big screen, along the bottom and in the top corner. You can also find both in the Share tab of the host console if you want to send them in a group chat before the party.

If you want to know exactly who is voting, the Guest passes tab can generate a personal QR pass for each guest. Once an event requires passes, a guest without one cannot join. Most house parties do not need this.

The Share tab also shows a voter meter. It turns orange as the event nears its voter limit, so you hear about the limit from the screen rather than from a guest whose vote button stopped working.

What your guests do

Each guest picks a nickname, or leaves it blank, and joins. From there they can:

  • Request songs. On a paid plan or with an event pass they search YouTube and pick a result. On the free plan they mostly type a title, and the big screen finds it on YouTube when its turn comes.
  • Vote for any song in the queue, and take the vote back if they change their mind.
  • Use one free play-next, which moves a song ahead of the vote ranking.
  • Have up to three of their own songs waiting at a time. When one of theirs plays, they get the slot back.

Putting the queue on the big screen

Open the Share tab and choose Open big-screen display. It opens in a new tab with the player, the song playing now, what plays next, the vote ranking and the join QR code. The top pick plays automatically when the current song ends.

The screen needs a little setup the first time on each device: a signed-in host account, a tap to allow YouTube playback, and sometimes a tap for sound. The /guides/big-screen guide walks through it, along with TVs, projectors and speakers.

Keeping the night on track

The Songs tab of the host console is where you steer. Everything here is available to you as the owner, and to co-hosts with manager rights on a Teams plan.

  • Delete a song that should not be there.
  • Pin a song with Play next in the moderation list. Your pins play before any guest's play-next, in the order you pinned them.
  • Undo a guest's play-next. The song drops back into the vote ranking and the guest gets their play-next back to use again.
  • Turn off Allow play next in Settings if you would rather votes alone decide. Songs already waiting keep their place.
  • Skip the current song from the Share tab or from the big screen itself.

Ending the night and the recap

  1. Let the event run to the end of its time, or choose Close early in the Settings tab when the music should stop.

  2. Guests who open the event afterwards see that it has ended, along with the songs that played. Nothing more can be requested or voted on.

  3. About half an hour after the event ends, CrowdTune writes a recap and emails it to you. The gap leaves room in case you decide the night is not over.

  4. Open the recap from the email. It shows the event name, the top songs, how many votes were cast and how many people voted. It names no guests, so you can pass the link around.

An event where nobody requested a song gets no recap. On a Teams plan, the Recap tab in the host console adds insights and an export of the night.

Questions

Do my guests need to download anything?

No. Joining happens in the phone's browser, with no app and no account.

What if two guests request the same song?

When the song was picked from search, adding it again returns the one already in the queue, so the votes are not split between two copies. Guests should vote for it instead.

The party is bigger than the free plan allows. What can I do?

Buy an event pass for that one event from the Settings tab. It lifts the event's limits for three days without a subscription. See /pricing.

Can I run two parties at once on the free plan?

No. A free account can have one active event at a time. Close the first one before you create the next.

Read next

  • Set up the big screen

    Put CrowdTune's Display Mode on a TV, laptop or projector: what the device needs, how to get sound, and what to expect from the YouTube player.

  • How play-next works

    Every guest gets one free play-next per event. Here is how it jumps the vote ranking, why it runs first in, first out, and what the host controls.