What is an aux battle?
An aux battle 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, then the room listens back and votes on the winner. It is also called an aux war, the aux game, or 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. Aux battles, plural, is the format; one aux battle is a single round of it.
If you came for the definition, that is it. What is here that an answer box cannot hand you: 3,505 free prompts across 16 categories, a wheel that picks one for you, and a room your friends can join from a four-letter code in about ten seconds.
How do you play an aux battle?
One person sets a prompt, everyone secretly submits the song they think answers it best, the room plays every submission back without saying whose it is, and everyone rates them. Highest average wins the round. Four steps, about four minutes.
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.
What makes a good aux battle prompt?
A good prompt is specific enough to be a challenge and open enough that everyone has a shot, like "a song that sounds like a Sunday morning" or "the most underrated track of the 2000s". Too vague and everyone picks the same obvious hit; too narrow and nobody can play. A great aux battle lives or dies on this.
We keep a free library of 3,505 aux battle prompts across 16 themes, ready to copy into a group chat, or just start a room and let Aux Battles draw them for you automatically.
Where do people play aux battles?
Mostly on calls, and mostly wherever the group already was. 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.
Aux battles, answered
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.