How It Works

Someone starts the party

One person taps Start a Party. Their device becomes the host, and the host is the only device that actually plays music — everyone else is a remote control. That matters for one reason: only the host needs an Apple Music subscription. Everyone else can vote and queue songs without one.

Pick the device with the best speaker, or the one already plugged into them.

Everyone else joins

Three ways in, and they all land in the same place:

• Scan the QR code on the host’s screen, or on the TV
• Type the party code — six characters, like M23WDJ
• Pick it from Nearby if you are on the same Wi-Fi

Codes leave out every character that can be mistaken for another one — no zero or capital O, no digit one, capital I or lower-case L — so there is nothing to squint at across a loud room.

All you set up is a name and an emoji. No account, no email, no password.

Vote on whatever is playing

The Vote tab shows the album art of the song playing right now. Swipe it right for Love It, left for Hate It — or tap the buttons, whichever you can manage with a drink in your hand.

Voting opens the moment a song starts and closes 30 seconds before it ends. That last half-minute is deliberate: it gives whoever is up next time to line their first track up, so the music never stops.

One vote per song, and it is final — so is everyone else’s. Choose accordingly.

When the crowd turns

If 80% of the votes cast are Hate It, someone else becomes the DJ.

It is 80% of the people who actually voted, not 80% of everyone in the room — turnout at a party is always partial, and demanding a supermajority of the whole crowd would mean this never happened. To stop three people hijacking a room of fifty, a minimum turnout scales with the party: at least a quarter of everyone present has to have voted, and never fewer than three people.

• 4 people at the party → 3 votes needed
• 20 people → 5 votes needed
• 50 people → 13 votes needed

Build your stack before your turn

Under Take the Mic, search Apple Music and add songs to your own stack. Think of it as your own pile of records: nobody else sees what is in it, and you can add to it, reorder it or throw things out at any point — long before your turn comes round.

When your turn as DJ comes round, your stack starts playing from the top. If your stack is empty when your turn arrives, Apple Music keeps the room going by itself rather than letting the party fall silent.

How the queue decides who is next

Your place in the DJ queue is earned, not first-come-first-served. It is based on your participation rate — the share of songs you have actually voted on since you joined.

Vote on everything and you climb. Stand in the corner ignoring it and you drift down. Someone who turns up late but votes on every song will pass someone who has been there all night and voted twice. Ties go to whoever joined first.

The queue is visible in Crowd Control, and it reorders itself as people vote.

Put it on the television

The Apple TV app is the party’s noticeboard. It shows the album art of what is playing, the running Love It / Hate It split, the party code and QR code for anyone still arriving, and who is up next to be the DJ.

It is display-only — nobody has to hand the remote round.