About Guess The Lyrics
This started from a small frustration with existing music quizzes: most of them make you read. You get a printed lyric with a word missing, which tests whether you have seen the words written down rather than whether you know the song. That is a spelling test wearing a music quiz costume.
So this one plays by ear, and it starts brutally short. One second of a real recording, from a random point in the track. Name it and the round is worth five points. Miss and you buy two seconds, then four, seven, eleven, each one worth a point less. Knowing a song and recognising it in a second turn out to be very different skills, and the gap between them is where the game lives.
There are 77 separate quizzes covering single artists, decades and moods, across pop, hip hop, K-pop, Latin, Bollywood and Pakistani music, plus a Daily Challenge that gives every player in the world the same five songs.
What this deliberately does not do
- No accounts. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to forget.
- No lyrics displayed, stored or reproduced anywhere on the site.
- No score uploads. Your streak lives in your browser and nowhere else.
- No ads inside a round. They sit around the game, never in the way of it.
How it is built
A Next.js application on Vercel. Track data comes from the public Apple iTunes Search API and is cached briefly, so a run starts in about one network round trip rather than five. Every quiz page is pre-rendered at build time, which is why they open instantly even on a slow connection.
Questions
Why is it called Guess The Lyrics if there are no lyrics on screen?
Because that is what players are actually doing in their head. You hear a few seconds of a recording and your brain fills in the words before you can name the title. Printing lyrics would both spoil that and reproduce work we have no right to reproduce, so the game stays audio-only.
Where does the music come from?
Short previews from the public Apple iTunes Search API, the same catalogue that powers Apple Music search results. Nothing is hosted by us, and recordings and artwork remain the property of their rights holders.
How is the game free?
Advertising. There is no subscription, no paid tier and no account to sell. If ads are enabled you will see them around the game, never inside a round.
Can I suggest an artist or a genre?
Yes, and it is the most useful feedback we get. Use the contact form and tell us who is missing.