Music boards turn the team's listening into a session ritual. Each participant picks one Spotify track that captures the mood of the week or the moment, and the board renders the result as a uniform grid of cover-art tiles.
How Participants Submit
The submission area shows a Spotify search box. Type a song or artist name and pick from the top five results. Each result shows the cover art, the track title, and the artist. Tap to submit.
There's no upload, no file handling, no API key for the participant - the search talks to a server-side proxy that fronts the Spotify catalogue search.
What The Tile Shows
Each music tile renders:
- The album cover art at the top.
- The track title and artist.
- The Spotify wordmark in the corner.
- A Listen On Spotify link that opens the track in the user's Spotify app.
The grid is uniform: two columns on mobile, three on tablet, four on desktop, with a tight 12px gap. The grid is busier than Picture mode but easier to scan because every tile is the same shape.
Preview Playback
When a track has a preview URL (Spotify exposes a 30-second clip for most tracks), the tile gains a play button. Hitting play opens a sticky mini-player at the bottom of the viewport with pause and next-up controls, similar to Apple Music's mobile player. Tracks without a preview URL show the cover art and details but cannot play in-page.
Synchronised Listening (Experimental)
A host can flip the board into Sync Mode from the facilitate view. When active, anyone who taps play broadcasts a play event to every connected participant, so the room hears the same preview at the same time. Sync Mode is for live sessions only; once the board is closed, playback is back to individual control.
Tips For Hosts
- Music boards make great kickoffs for a retrospective. "What song captures last sprint?" produces material the rest of the conversation can lean on.
- The cap on submissions per person works well for music. One song each keeps the playlist tight; uncapped quickly becomes overwhelming.
- For shy teams, anonymous names help. People share songs they would not otherwise admit to.
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