Learn the clip rhythm with broadly familiar tracks.
The complete game guide
How to Play Songspot
How quickly can you identify a familiar recording? Songspot turns that question into a progressive guess-the-song game. Play the same ranked Daily 5 as everyone else, or switch to unlimited, unranked Practice.
Daily 5
How does the daily leaderboard work?
Every player receives the same five songs for the current UTC date: one Easy, one Medium, one Hard, one Expert and one Impossible track, always in that order. The clip ladder is fixed at 0.1, 0.5, 2, 8 and 15 seconds. Difficulty, stage toggles and rerolls are unavailable so every published run uses the same conditions.
| Correct at | Points | Daily maximum |
|---|---|---|
| 0.1s | 1,200 | 6,000 points |
| 0.5s | 975 | |
| 2s | 750 | |
| 8s | 525 | |
| 15s | 300 |
A missed song scores zero. The leaderboard sorts by total score, then by server-recorded completion time; exact ties share a rank. Each browser profile gets one attempt per UTC day. A new attempt cannot start during the final five minutes before reset, and an unfinished attempt expires at 00:00 UTC.
After the fifth song, choose a unique public nickname and complete the anti-bot check to publish. Your nickname is tied to this browser in v1 and cannot be edited, but you can delete the entire profile from the leaderboard page. Shared Daily results show only score, five result cells and rank—never the song answers.
The clip ladder
How do progressive audio clues work?
Songspot uses five possible listening windows. They are cumulative challenges rather than equal visual steps: each stage lets you hear the recording from the beginning for the selected amount of time. The progress bar is weighted by the real duration of those stages, so later clues take up more space.
| Clip | What you may notice | Best approach |
|---|---|---|
| 0.1s | Attack, timbre, ambience | Trust immediate recognition |
| 0.5s | Instrument texture, first beat | Focus on production details |
| 2s | Rhythm, chord colour, vocal onset | Form a short candidate list |
| 8s | Phrase, groove, melody | Confirm the likely track |
| 15s | Complete preview clue | Use the full musical context |
In Practice, you can turn any clip stage off in the game menu. If you remove the shortest clue, the round moves to the earliest remaining stage. If you restore 0.1 seconds, the progress bar returns to that opening challenge. Daily 5 always keeps all five stages active.
Controls
What does each Songspot control do?
- Play / pause
- Starts or pauses the current clue. The playback mask moves across the weighted progress bar while the clip is audible.
- Guess field
- Searches the available titles as you type. Select a suggestion to avoid spelling and punctuation differences.
- Skip
- Moves to the next enabled clue without submitting a title. Use it when the opening sound gives you no useful information.
- Reroll all
- Draws a fresh Practice track at the current difficulty and resets the clip ladder. It is hidden in Daily 5.
- Volume
- Adjusts playback independently of your device volume and remembers the choice in this browser.
- UI options
- Changes spotlight treatment, board width and interface style without affecting the song or result.
Difficulty
Which difficulty should you choose?
The rules never change; difficulty changes the catalogue depth. Easy is designed around songs that many listeners can recognise quickly. Medium and Hard ask for broader listening habits. Expert and Impossible are intended for players who enjoy the uncertainty of less obvious choices.
Keep recognisable artists while widening the song pool.
Rely on production details instead of immediate familiarity.
Expect fewer obvious openings and deeper catalogue knowledge.
Treat every correct early guess as a genuine surprise.
Listening strategy
How can you improve at short clips?
Use headphones, set a comfortable volume before playing and listen for the beginning of sounds rather than waiting for melody. Transients—the first instant of a drum, piano or consonant—often carry more identity than expected. Notice stereo width, room tone and whether a track begins with silence, breath, noise or a clean musical attack.
Avoid repeatedly replaying a clue while changing your answer at random. Make a hypothesis, reveal the next stage and listen for evidence. Over time, you will learn which details produce reliable recognition and which merely feel familiar.
Sharing
How do friend challenges work?
When the answer screen appears, use Challenge your friend. The generated link keeps the selected track and difficulty without adding the title to the message. Your friend gets the same listening problem and can compare how early they solved it.
Challenge links are meant for friendly Practice play. They do not affect Daily 5 profiles or rankings, and the link itself should not be treated as private information.
Your first clue is waiting