Introducing SongUp
Every great party has a soundtrack — and until now, that soundtrack lived on one person’s phone. Whoever got to the aux cord first controlled the whole night, and everyone else just had to live with their taste. SongUp changes that. It turns any speaker into a shared jukebox where your guests request songs straight from their phones, in a fair queue, no app install and no login required.
The problem with the aux cord
At almost every party, one of two things happens: someone hijacks the aux and holds onto it all night, or nobody wants that responsibility and the music never really gets going. Shared streaming playlists don’t fix this either — anyone can dump ten songs in a row, and there’s no way for the room to say “actually, play this one next.” SongUp was built to solve exactly this: put the queue in everyone’s hands, but keep it fair.
How it works
- The host opens a room and connects it to their speaker, TV, or sound system.
- Guests scan a QR code to join instantly, right in their mobile browser — no app download, no account.
- Everyone searches YouTube and adds songs to the shared queue — each guest can queue up a few songs at a time (configurable), so no one person can flood the list.
- Songs play in the order they’re requested, with a fallback playlist filling in automatically whenever the queue runs dry.
- The host stays in control the whole time — on Pro rooms, bump any song to play next, skip, or remove one whenever it’s needed.
What makes it different
A few things set SongUp apart from other “collaborative playlist” tools:
- No guest sign-in, ever. Guests never need a Spotify, Apple Music, or SongUp account to participate — just a browser.
- A fair queue. Hosts can cap how many songs each guest can add at once, so one person can’t flood the queue with their entire watchlist.
- A fallback playlist. When the request queue runs dry, a pre-built playlist plays automatically so the music never stops.
- Free to start. Anyone can open a room for free. A one-time $5 upgrade unlocks an unlimited fallback playlist and mobile host controls for hosts who want more.
- Open Source. SongUp is open source, and always will be. It’s become a real passion project of mine.
Why I built it
I kept running into the same problem at parties. Either no one was bothering to actually put in songs, Spotify jam randomly stopped working, or one guy (that is you, Florian) would just put in 100 of their weird AM radio songs no one wanted to hear. SongUp fixes that, because everyone can only put in 2 songs at once. (This is configurable tho)
Ready to try it? Host your first room →