How to Build a Pub Quiz Music Round (Without Giving the Answers Away)

The music round is the best round of the night and the one most likely to go wrong. Everyone joins in, the room gets loud, and teams who have sat quietly through three rounds of general knowledge suddenly have something to say.

It is also the only round where you can hand the answer over by accident, in the first two seconds, without noticing. Here is how I build one so that doesn't happen.

Score it half and half

Half a point for the artist, half a point for the song title. Ten songs, ten points.

That split matters more than it sounds. A team who knows the tune but can't name it still gets something, so nobody writes the round off after three songs. It also keeps the scores tight, which keeps the league table interesting and keeps people arguing on the way to the bar.

Whole points for a full correct answer and nothing otherwise is the fastest way to make a music round feel unfair.

Picking the ten tracks

The sweet spot is a song everybody has heard a hundred times and nobody has ever had to name. That is where the groaning comes from, and the groaning is the point.

What I aim for across ten tracks:

• Spread the decades. Two or three from the 60s and 70s, a few 80s and 90s, a couple from the last twenty years. If your room skews older, weight it that way, but never make it all one era or half the room switches off.
• Big songs, not deep cuts. Nobody enjoys a round of album tracks. Obscure does not mean hard, it just means annoying.
• Vary how hard the title is. Some songs are named after their chorus and are basically free points. Others are famous tunes with titles nobody knows. Mix them.
• One or two novelty picks. A theme tune, an advert track, something daft. It breaks the round up.
• Avoid anything with a spoken intro that names the band. It happens more than you'd think.

The bit that catches people out: where to stop the clip

Plenty of songs sing their own title in the opening line. Play too long and you have handed out half a point for free.

Some give you barely a couple of seconds before the words arrive. Others never sing the title at all, and if you cut those too early you have made the title half almost impossible. Both are fixable, but only if you know which is which before you get to the pub.

So: have a run through at home. Play each clip, note where you are stopping it, and write the timing down. It takes ten minutes and it is the single thing that separates a music round that works from one that falls over.

As a rule I give 15 to 20 seconds a clip. Long enough to recognise, short enough to stay tense.

Play everything twice

Play each clip twice before you move on to the next one, exactly like you read a standard question twice. Then, at the end of the round, ask if anyone wants repeats and play those again.

Do the repeats at the end rather than taking requests as you go. Otherwise the round takes half an hour and you lose the room.

Keep your screen to yourself

This is the one I would tattoo on new quiz masters.

Whatever you are playing from — a phone, a laptop, our QR code playlist — that screen is effectively the answer sheet. It lists the artist and the title in order. The nearest table can read it, and they will.

Turn the screen away. If you are using a laptop on the bar, angle it. If you are on your phone, hold it flat. In our packs the QR code is printed for the quiz master, not for the teams, and it goes straight to the right playlist so you are never scrolling around looking for it in front of an audience.

It is also worth saying: a music round is audio only. Nothing goes up on a screen and there is nothing for the teams to look at. The only thing that can give an answer away is the song itself — and you.

The kit

You need less than you think, but you need it to work.

• The pub's own system, if you can get on it. Bluetooth into the house PA is better than anything you can carry in. Ask the landlord.
• Failing that, a pair of Bluetooth speakers that dual-pair. I use a couple of Tronsmart Groove speakers linked together. Plenty of others do the job.
• Check the volume before anyone arrives. An empty room and a full room sound completely different. Set it for full.
• Download the playlist offline if the pub's wifi is temperamental, which it always is.

Music round variations worth trying

Once the standard format is bedded in, these keep it fresh without confusing anybody:

• Intros only. Five seconds each. Brutal, quick, great before half time.
• Name the year. One point for the year the song was released, no artist or title needed.
• One-line lyrics. You read a lyric out, they name the song. No audio needed, useful when the speakers die.
• Theme tunes. TV and film themes. Older rooms love this one.
• The connection round. Ten songs with something linking them — all one-word titles, all colours, all number ones. Bonus point for spotting the link.
• Covers. Play the cover, they name the original artist.

Don't run a variation every week. The standard round is the standard round for a reason, and teams like knowing what is coming.

Do I need a licence to play music at a pub quiz?

The pub itself normally holds the licence covering recorded music on the premises. That is the landlord's responsibility rather than yours, but check with them before your first night rather than assuming — it is a thirty second conversation and it saves an awkward one later.

Common music round mistakes

• Not testing the tracks. Every problem in this article comes back to this one.
• Letting a table see your playlist. Turn the screen.
• Playing clips once. Twice, always. People are talking, glasses are clinking.
• All one decade. Half the room disengages.
• Deep cuts. Hard is fine, obscure is not.
• Taking repeat requests mid-round. Save them for the end.

Get those right and the music round becomes the loudest ten minutes of your night, which is exactly what it should be.

If you want the whole thing done for you, every PubQuizzes pack comes with a music round and a QR code that opens the playlist ready to go, alongside three standard rounds, a picture round and the answer sheets. And if you are building a quiz night from the ground up, start here.

Mitch and Harry