A short guide · for music rooms
Five short sections for weddings, cover bands, pub gigs, and any room where the crowd gets to pick the songs. Practical, opinionated, and no talk of algorithms.
01Before the doors open
The QR going up doesn't just say "request a song" — it sets the whole tone. Decide what the room is before it walks in.
Test the QR from where the back of the room actually stands. On a dark dance floor a small QR is invisible from six feet away.
Decide your approval floor and write it down. A wedding runs tight (no explicit, no karaoke bombs). A pub runs loose. Same app, opposite rooms — you're deciding which today is.
Play something good before the QR goes up. An empty room with an empty queue is a slow start; a room with a track already going invites requests.
Have the audience view open on your own phone. You want to catch the weird submission first, not last.
02When the QR goes up
The first two approvals set the rules of the game. Approve wide early — people are checking whether their request will actually get in.
Say the URL out loud as well as showing the QR. Cracked cameras, old phones, someone at the back who didn't see the sign.
Approve the first request even if it wouldn't have been your pick. That single "yes" tells the room requesting works. Silence after a submission trains people not to submit again.
Trust the upvote counter. If a track has fifteen votes and you'd rather not play it — play it anyway. The counter is the room's taste; ignoring it is ignoring the room.
Don't over-explain. You are the DJ, the queue is a strong suggestion. Nobody wants a lecture about song curation between tracks.
03During
Two hours in, the queue has personality. Read it like a set list — pacing matters more than throughput.
Alternate energy. Don't stack five bangers in a row or you'll run the dance floor dry. Bright, bright, breather, bright is a better rhythm than bright, bright, bright, bright.
Watch what's climbing, not just what's on top. A song at seven votes that got there in two minutes tells you more than one that's been sitting at fifteen for an hour.
If a queued track has aged twenty minutes and still has real support, play it. Or dismiss it. Leaving it in limbo is worse than either.
Read the room and skip ahead when the vibe changes. If the crowd suddenly wants slow, don't force through the next requested banger. Skip forward in the list to something that fits — nobody notices skipped orderings, everyone notices bad pacing.
04When it gets awkward
You will get an explicit track someone thinks is funny, a song you literally can't play, or a mood-killer at the exact wrong moment. All fixable — quietly.
Explicit or hostile requests: dismiss silently. No announcement, no eye contact. The audience never saw it — pending stays private.
Duplicates. Two people request the same song; approve one, dismiss the other with no drama. The second person will see their request wasn't approved and figure it out.
Can't play it. Song isn't on your setup, region-locked, whatever. Dismiss. No need to explain in-app; people move on faster than you think.
Right song, wrong moment. A heartbreak ballad at 10pm on a Friday. Don't play it, don't dismiss it — hold it. If the mood shifts later, it's ready.
05After
Ending is a small art. A room that leaves happy tells three friends; a room that leaves flat tells no one.
Play the song that got a lot of upvotes but never played, as your closer. It leaves people saying "finally!" — the opposite of "already done?"
Screenshot the transcript before you leave. Even if you never look at it again, someone at the party will want to know what that one song was.
Say thanks in person to whoever requested the wildest thing that actually landed. That took courage; recognising it is why they'll come back.
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