Rules
The board follows the published rules below. There are no hidden ranking factors: rank is the bid, and playback must be real.
Ranking
| Rank is the bid | Tracks are ordered by bid from highest to lowest. Recency, editorial preference, and play counts do not affect rank. |
|---|---|
| Whole dollars | USD only. Integers. No cents. Step is $1. |
| Minimum | First bid for a listing last 7 days must be $5. |
| Below #1 still lists | Paying less than the opening song still appears at the rank that bid can take. Those tracks are not the opening song. |
| Equal bids | The track placed first keeps the higher rank. |
| Raise | The same cleaned listen link may raise while its placement is active. The original payer is charged only the difference, and the new total must be at least $1 higher. |
| Cannot steal the difference | A different listing that wants that rank must pay the full target amount, not the incumbent’s difference. |
| Payment claims rank | Rank changes only after payment is confirmed. An incomplete or abandoned checkout never appears on the board. |
Rolling last 7 days
| Period | Rolling last 7 days from first paid placement. Live rank is that window only. |
|---|---|
| Boundary | Each placement keeps its own seven-day window. The board does not reset for everyone at Monday midnight and #1 is never locked for a fixed 24 hours. |
| What resets | Live rank after seven days from first paid placement. Clicks and bids do not carry once that window ends. |
| What does not carry | Previous window bid amounts. Want the next open? Pay again. |
If nobody has paid for an active placement, there is no opening song.
Real playback
- The listen link is a real, secure page or stream (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube / YouTube Music, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Mixcloud, an official radio stream, or the artist’s own site).
- Listen opens the cleaned destination or a supported official player. Both are real playback.
- No fake streams. A silent custom player that does not load the listing’s URL is forbidden. We never generate or loop audio to fill the slot.
- If last 7 days has no paid #1, there is no player and no opening song.
No invented play counts
We never display a play count, stream count, monthly listeners, or view count from any platform. Public clicks on the listen link are the only counter. Clicks are not plays.
Listen URL hygiene
- Use a secure, public listen or stream link.
- Tracking, referral, and affiliate parameters are removed.
- Strip fragments. Store and click only the stripped URL.
- Reject chat / invite hosts: Telegram,
t.me,wa.me, chat.whatsapp,discord.gg, Discord invite,m.me,signal.me. - Adult content and private, local-only, credentialed, or otherwise unsafe destinations are rejected.
- Known shorteners (
bit.ly,t.co,tinyurl.com,lnkd.in) are not stored.
Rejected links never create a listing or start a charge.