What is an aux battle?
An aux battle (or aux battles, when you're talking about the format rather than one round) is a music game where friends compete over who has the best taste. One person picks a prompt, everyone submits the song they think fits it best, and then you listen back and vote on the winning track. It's also known as an aux war, the aux game, or simply a song battle with friends.
The name comes from the aux cord: whoever's plugged in controls the music. An aux battle turns that fight into an actual game: instead of one person hogging the aux, everyone gets a turn, and the room decides whose pick wins.
How an aux battle works
Pick a theme and a prompt
Someone chooses a theme (mood, decade, genre, lyrics) and everyone gets the same prompt for the round, like "song that hits different at 3 AM".
Everyone submits a song
Each player picks the one track they think fits the prompt best. No group-chat spamming: one submission each, kept secret until reveal.
Listen back and vote
You play each song and rate it. Voting is blind, so you judge the track, not the person, and names are revealed only after the votes are in.
Highest-rated pick wins
The best-rated song takes the round. Play a few rounds, keep score, and crown whoever has the best taste in the group.
The prompts are the whole game
A great aux battle lives or dies on its prompts. Too vague and everyone picks the same obvious hit; too narrow and no one can play. The best prompts are specific enough to be a challenge but open enough that everyone has a shot, things like "a song that sounds like a Sunday morning" or "the most underrated track of the 2000s".
We keep a free library of 3,205 aux battle prompts across 15 themes, ready to copy into a group chat, or just start a room and let Aux Battles draw them for you automatically.
Where aux battles happen
The format travels. Most groups play it on a Discord call where everyone is already sitting in the same voice channel, or over FaceTime when the group is spread across cities. In person it works as a party game for groups, with one speaker and everyone submitting from their own phone.
Streamers run it as a Twitch music game in classic, bracket tournament, or friends mode format, with chat voting on the picks either way. And if you came here from another game, it doubles as a free Jackbox alternative and a Music League alternative.
Common questions
What does "aux" mean?
The "aux" comes from the aux cord, the auxiliary cable that plugs into a car or speaker to play music from your phone. Whoever holds the aux controls the music, so an aux battle is a friendly fight over whose taste wins.
How many people do you need?
It works with as few as 2 players and scales to a whole party. The sweet spot is 3–10 friends: enough taste in the room to make voting interesting, small enough that every round moves fast.
Do you need Spotify?
Not necessarily. Rooms can run on Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, or any mix of them, and all three now play right in the browser with no account or app needed. Logging into Spotify unlocks the full track instead of a 30 second preview, but it is not required to join, submit, listen or vote.
Is it the same as aux wars or the aux game?
Yes. Aux war, aux wars, auxwars, and "the aux game" are all names for the same thing. Different friend groups picked up different names, but the game is identical: submit a song to a prompt and vote on the best pick.
Can you play an aux battle on stream?
Yes, that's a Twitch Battle, and it now runs in three formats. Classic has chat and any players in the room score prompt-based rounds together. Bracket Tournament seeds submissions into a 1v1 elimination bracket you referee live. Friends Mode brings your real friends into the room to submit while chat alone judges the winner.
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