Playing music games over a video call

The problem with music on calls

Video call apps are built for voices. They squash audio, filter out what they think is background noise and switch between speakers, which is exactly wrong for music. If one person plays a song into their microphone, everyone else hears a thin, stuttering version of it, often with gaps where somebody coughed.

The fix is to stop sending the music through the call at all. Use the call for talking — the cheering, the heckling, the outrage at a low score — and let each person’s own device play the music. That is how Top Tracks handles remote games.

How everyone hears the tracks

In a Top Tracks remote game, every phone plays each track’s 30-second preview at the same time. The previews come from Apple Music, but nobody needs an Apple Music account or any music app: the game plays them. Each phone also shows the card, whose turn it is, the scores you give and the results, so you don’t need a TV or a shared screen.

Thirty seconds is usually enough to judge a song, and it keeps the game moving. If someone wants the whole track, Open in lets them listen on their own phone in the music app they use.

Prefer to play full tracks? The host can switch Play previews off in the lobby. Each player then plays their own track from their music app and shares their sound on the call. It sounds better in theory than in practice, because of the call audio problems above, so previews are the safer choice for most groups.

Which call app?

Any of them. Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime and WhatsApp all work, because the game runs separately in a web browser on each person’s phone. Pick whichever app your group already uses, so nobody spends the first ten minutes installing something.

A good arrangement is the call on a laptop, tablet or TV, and the game on a phone. That way faces stay visible on the bigger screen while the phone is the hand of cards and the secret ballot.

Setting up the game

1. Get everyone on the call first, and remind them to have their phone charged and nearby.
2. The host opens Top Tracks, picks On a call and creates the room. (In an existing room, switch on Remote game in All settings.)
3. The host taps Copy invite for the call chat and pastes the invite into the call’s chat. Everyone taps the link and chooses a nickname — no app to install and no account needed.
4. Everyone taps Tap to enable sound once. Browsers won’t play sound until you tap, and in a remote game each phone needs its own tap.
5. Keep the call on, turn phones up, and start the game.

Some cards need everyone in one room, so the game leaves them out of remote games automatically: Perform (sing it yourself) and Shuffle (play whatever your music app serves up). Everything else — the secret picks, the 3-2-1 scoring, the Big Reveal — works just as it does on a sofa. Ourcards and scoring guide explains the rules. The music game on a video call page has a short summary.

Audio tips

• Mute while the previews play. Everyone can hear the song perfectly well on their own phone; nobody needs to hear it a second time through your microphone, or your dishwasher. Unmute for the reaction.
• Or use headphones. Listening to the game through headphones on your phone keeps the music out of your microphone, so you can stay unmuted and keep talking.
• Put the phone down. Play the preview from the phone’s speaker, not held up to the laptop. It keeps the call clearer and stops the call app’s noise filter fighting the music.
• When a track has no preview. Not every song has one, and typed-in tracks don’t. In that case the picker plays it from their own music app and shares their sound on the call, or pastes the song’s link in the call chat. Everyone else can use Open in to hear it on their own phone.
• No sound on one phone? It almost always means theTap to enable sound button hasn’t been tapped, the phone is on silent, or the volume is down.

Timing

Because every phone plays the same preview together, the room hears each pick at the same moment and reacts together — which is most of the fun. A few settings keep the pace right on a call:

• In a game with previews, scoring opens when the preview ends, so nobody votes before they have heard the track.
• Once everyone has voted, the next track starts after a short countdown (on by default), so you are not waiting on the host to press a button.
• An optional pick timer (2 minutes, 1 minute or 30 seconds) helps if people get distracted by the rest of the call.

Allow a little longer than you would in person — chat on calls tends to overlap — and agree a finishing time if people are in different time zones. As a rough guide, a game takes about three minutes per player per round.

When you can’t all be on at once

Some groups can never find an evening that suits everyone. For them, Top Tracks leagues can run as remote leagues in your own time: a round opens with a card, everyone picks a track before a deadline, then everyone listens to the round’s playlist and scores before a second deadline. Remote leagues are part of the full game and need the Remote leagues add-on; the in-game How to play guide has the details.

Playing with family across the country? Ourfamily game night guide covers Family mode and keeping it fun for mixed ages.