Why hidden playback matters in a music game

If you scan a music card with your phone's camera, the song title appears in the link preview before you have even tapped it. The round is over. Somebody reads it out, everybody laughs, and you move on to the next card slightly less interested than you were.

That one detail is why the QRSong! app exists, and it is worth explaining properly because it is the difference between a music guessing game and a stack of links.

What hidden playback actually does

The app reads the card, works out which track it is, and starts playing it without ever showing you what it is. No title on screen, no artist, no year, no album art. The music starts and the room argues.

When somebody gets it, or gives up, you turn the card over. The answer is printed on the back. That is the whole loop, and it only works if the phone stays quiet.

Why the camera cannot do this

A QR code holds a URL. Your camera reads the URL, and both the preview and the browser then show you the page title, which for a music link is the song name. There is no setting that suppresses it, because from the phone's point of view it is being helpful.

The camera route has a second problem: it opens a browser first and then tries to hand off to a music app. On some phones that fails, on others it opens a service you do not use, and it always adds a few seconds. Once is fine. Eighty times in an evening is an evening about phones rather than music.

Where it works and where it does not

This is the part most people do not know until they are sitting down to play, and it decides which streaming service you want:

• Spotify and Apple Music: hidden playback of the complete track. This is the full experience.
• Tidal and Deezer: hidden playback using a thirty second preview. More than enough to guess a year, and the title still stays hidden.
• YouTube Music: no hidden playback. The link has to open in the YouTube Music app, where the title is on screen. It plays your cards, but somebody has to hold the phone and look away.

If you have a choice, pick Spotify or Apple Music. The full breakdown is on the supported platforms page, and if you already own cards and no Spotify account, this covers your options.

The two settings worth changing

Where the song starts. By default a track starts at the beginning, which for a lot of songs means an intro nobody recognises. Starting at a random point makes the game harder and much better with a crowd that knows its music. Starting at the chorus makes it easier for a mixed group.

How long it plays. Shorter is harder. Fifteen seconds is brisk, thirty is comfortable, and anything longer and people stop guessing and start listening, which is a pleasant way for a game to quietly stop being a game.

Both are in the app, and both are worth a minute before the first round rather than being discovered halfway through the evening.

It reads other decks too

The scanner is not limited to our cards. It reads Hitster cards and selected other music QR cards, so a deck you already own plays through the same app, on whichever service you connected. That is genuinely useful if the cards you have came with an app that only supports one service.

The app is free on iPhone and Android: download it here.