How to Play MUSIC CUP

MUSIC CUP turns an artist's catalogue into a knockout tournament. You never build a bracket, never add songs one by one, never keep score. You type a name, and the matchups are waiting. This page walks through the whole thing, from the first search to the moment a champion is crowned.

The idea in one paragraph

Ranking twenty songs at once is genuinely hard. Choosing between two of them takes a second. MUSIC CUP is built on that difference. Songs meet in pairs, you pick the one you love more, the winner moves on, and after a couple of dozen of those small honest choices the field narrows to one track. The answer that comes out the other end tends to surprise people, because it is assembled from real preferences rather than from what you think your favourite ought to be.

Step by step

1. Search an artist. Type the name into the box on the home page. Suggestions appear as you type. Songs are pulled from the official music catalogues, so almost anyone with a released discography works, whether they sing in English, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Thai or anything else.
2. Choose a song pool. Three modes decide which tracks enter. Popular songs takes the artist's best known material, random songs shuffles the whole catalogue and pulls a fresh field every time, and custom songs hands you the list so you can tick exactly what belongs.
3. Check the lineup and start. The tournament size is chosen for you based on how many songs are available. Confirm the field and the first matchup is on screen.
4. Play the rounds. Two songs, one choice, repeat. Tap the preview button on a card if a title is not ringing a bell. Thirty seconds of a track is usually enough to remember how you feel about it.
5. Crown a champion. When one song is left, a shareable image of its whole run through the bracket is drawn for you automatically.

The three song pools, and when to use each

Popular songs

The default, and the right choice the first time you run an artist. The field is the material most listeners know, so every matchup is between two songs you can actually judge. This is the mode to use when the question you want answered is which of an artist's hits is truly your favourite.

Random songs

The catalogue is shuffled and a fresh field is drawn, which means album tracks, B sides and things you skipped past for years get a seat. Run the same artist twice in this mode and you get two different tournaments. It is the best way to rediscover a discography you thought you already knew.

Custom songs

You pick the field yourself from the full list. Useful for narrowing to one era, one album, or the ten songs you and a friend cannot stop arguing about. Custom mode also lets you set the bracket size directly, so a quick four song playoff is one tap away.

Bracket sizes and the group stage

The shape of the tournament follows the size of the field, up to a maximum of 48 songs.

• Large fields open with a group stage. Songs are split into groups of four and the top two in each group advance, which gives every track more than one chance to make an impression.
• The wildcard round then rescues a few songs that went out of a brutal group but clearly deserved better. Anyone who has watched a real tournament knows the feeling of a good side drawn into the group of death, and this round exists for exactly that.
• The knockout rounds take the survivors one on one until a champion is left.
• Smaller fields skip the group stage entirely and go straight to a knockout of 16, 8 or 4.

You do not have to memorise any of this. Hit start and the format is configured for you.

While you are playing

Made a choice you regret two seconds later? There is an undo, and it works all the way back through the rounds. Need to stop? Just close the tab. Your progress is stored in your own browser, so the tournament is still sitting at the same matchup when you come back tonight or next week. Nothing is tied to an account and nothing needs to be saved manually.

The preview button on each song card plays a short clip. It is the fastest way to settle a matchup between two tracks whose titles you half remember.

After the final

Winning a MUSIC CUP is only half the fun. When the champion is decided, three things become available.

• The road to the final. An image of the full bracket is drawn automatically, showing which songs your champion beat and how close each round was. Save it or send it straight into a group chat.
• A link your friends can open. Instead of a screenshot with no context, you can share a link to your result that shows the bracket as a proper page.
• A place on the public charts. Finished tournaments are counted anonymously into the MUSIC CUP charts, which rank songs and artists by how often fans crown them. No account, no name, no personal details are attached. See the about page for what is and is not recorded.

Playing against a friend

Open the invite option from the home page and copy the link. Whoever opens it gets the identical bracket, with the same songs in the same positions, so comparing champions afterwards is a fair fight rather than two unrelated tournaments. This is the version of the game that starts arguments, in the good way.

Putting it on your home screen

MUSIC CUP runs in the browser and there is nothing to install, but it can sit on your home screen like an app if you want it to.

• iPhone and iPad in Safari. Tap Share, then Add to Home Screen, then Add. If you cannot see the share button, tap the three dots at the bottom right first.
• iPhone and iPad in other browsers. Tap Share, open More, then Add to Home Screen. If the option is missing, open the page in Safari and install from there.
• Android. Open the browser menu and choose Install app or Add to Home Screen.
• Inside WeChat. The built in browser cannot install it. Tap the three dots at the top right, choose Open in Browser, then follow the steps above.

A few things worth knowing

• It is free, all of it, and there is nothing to buy. No account is required to play.
• The interface runs in 14 languages, and the search follows the language you are using.
• It is designed for phones first, and works in any modern mobile or desktop browser.
• Running the same artist again next month is encouraged. Tastes move, and the champion moves with them.

Still have a question? The FAQ page covers the rest.