How to Play an Aux Battle
To play an aux battle: pick a prompt everyone answers, have each player secretly submit one song that fits it, play the tracks back without saying whose is whose, then vote. Highest-rated pick wins the round. Play five to ten rounds and keep score.
That is the whole game. The rest of this page is the part that actually decides who wins — how to choose a pick, and the house rules that keep a game from falling apart.
Start a Game — FreeSetting up a game
Get everyone in the same room — real or virtual
In person you need one speaker. Remote you need a call plus somewhere to share links. Online, one person starts a room and shares the four-letter code; everyone joins from their own phone and nobody installs anything.
Agree how many rounds
Five to ten. Fewer than five and one lucky pick decides it. More than ten and people start submitting whatever is at the top of their recently-played.
Draw a prompt nobody has seen
Whoever picks the prompt has already thought of their answer, so draw it randomly — spin the wheel, use the generator, or let the game deal it.
Everyone submits one song in secret
One track each. Secrecy is what stops people piling onto whoever went first. Set a timer — two minutes is plenty and it keeps the game moving.
Play back blind
Play every submission without saying whose it is. Around 30 to 60 seconds each is enough to judge a pick without the round dragging.
Vote, reveal, score
Everyone rates each track, votes lock, then names come out. Highest average takes the round. Keep a running total across rounds.
How to win
Aux battles look like a taste contest but they are really a reading-the-room contest. Six things separate people who win rounds from people who just play good songs.
Answer the prompt, not the vibe
The most common way to lose is submitting a song you love that only loosely fits. Rooms reward the pick that most obviously nails the brief. If someone has to explain why their song fits, it has already lost.
Avoid the first song everyone thought of
If the prompt is "best driving song" and you submit "Mr. Brightside", three other people considered it. Obvious picks get middling scores because nobody feels clever voting for them.
But do not go so deep nobody recognises it
The opposite failure. An unheard track gets polite 3s. You want the song people know but forgot — recognition plus surprise is what scores 5s.
Play the first 30 seconds
Most rooms judge on a clip, not the full track. A song with a slow two-minute build loses to one that announces itself immediately, however much better it is overall.
Read the room, not the charts
You are being voted on by five specific people. A deep-cut jazz pick wins in one room and dies in another. Track what your group actually rewards over the first few rounds and adjust.
Use humour carefully
A joke pick that lands takes the round outright. A joke pick that misses scores 1s and costs you the game. Save them for when you are already ahead, or for Wildcard rounds where everyone expects it.
House rules worth agreeing on
Every group ends up inventing these after the first game goes wrong. You may as well start with them.
- ×Do not campaign for your own song before votes lock — it defeats blind voting.
- ×Do not skip a track early because you dislike it. Everyone gets the same listening time.
- ×Do not submit a ten-minute song unless the prompt asks for one.
- ×Do not re-use a song you already played in an earlier round.
- ×Do not argue with the result. Take the next round instead.
Where to get prompts
Draw them randomly — it is the one setup decision that most affects how fair the game feels. We keep 2,995 free prompts sorted by category, and a spin wheel and prompt generator for picking one out loud off a single phone.
Playing it wherever you are
The rules don't change, but the setup does. On a Discord call the host shares their audio; over FaceTime everyone plays the track on their own device at the same time; at a house party one phone drives the speaker while the rest submit from theirs.
Whichever room you're in, you can submit from Spotify, YouTube or SoundCloud, and stuck players can raid the song lists for a pick that actually answers the prompt.
Questions
How do you play an aux battle?
Pick a prompt everyone answers, have each player secretly submit one song that fits it, play all the tracks back without revealing who chose what, then vote on the best pick. The highest-rated song wins the round. Play five to ten rounds and keep score.
How do you win an aux battle?
Pick the least obvious song that still clearly answers the prompt. Rooms punish picks that ignore the brief and picks so obvious everyone considered them. The winning zone is a track people recognise but did not think of themselves.
How do you get good at aux battles?
Build a mental shortlist by category rather than by favourite. Most people lose because they search for a song when the prompt lands. Players who already have three candidates for "sad", "hype" and "funny" answer faster and pick better.
What are the rules of an aux battle?
There is no official rulebook, but the four rules every version shares are: one prompt per round, one song per player, submissions stay secret until playback, and voting happens before names are revealed. Everything else is house rules.
How long does an aux battle take?
A round takes three to five minutes — prompt, submissions, listening and voting. A full game of five to ten rounds runs about 30 to 45 minutes.
How many songs should each person submit?
One per round. Multiple submissions per player make the listening phase drag and let one person dominate a round by covering several angles at once.
Can you play an aux battle over text or FaceTime?
Yes. Over a call, everyone plays their own track when it is their turn. Over text it is slower but works — people send links and the group votes. Playing online is easier because submissions stay hidden automatically and voting is anonymous without anyone having to police it.
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