Music League is a group-based music game where friends compete by sharing and voting on songs around themed challenges. Apparently inspired by fantasy sports games, and a little like a weaponised, gamified Last FM, users submit songs based on themed prompts like “Best Road Trip Songs” or “Guilty Pleasures”, then vote anonymously on the picks, and climb a leaderboard. The platform says that it has grown to 180K Monthly Active Users (MAUs) thanks solely to enthusiastic players’ word-of-mouth, and has also now announced an advisory board of people with experience in the music-tech startup space – including Ted Suh, former Snapchat head of music, licensing expert Vickie Nauman, and lawyer / advisor Cliff Fluet.

Music discovery is one of those seemingly simple and deeply difficult things: someone who likes DJs to recommend tracks to them has a very different connection point to music compared to someone to whom Music League holds appeal. Today also sees Spotify’s multifarious UX changes, and Shazam’s virtual charts – all to improve how users surface songs. There’s a need out there and inventive apps like this may find a sizeable audience.