🎵 What's Now Playing BETA

Real-time music charts from streaming communities

📋 Frequently Asked Questions

📑 Quick Navigation

    🚀 Getting Started

    What's Now Playing Charts is a real-time music discovery platform that tracks what streamers and content creators are listening to. We aggregate music data from streaming communities to create dynamic charts showing trending tracks, popular artists, and musical discoveries.

    To start tracking your music:

    1. Download and install the What's Now Playing client
    2. Start playing music - your tracks will automatically appear on the charts!
    3. Sign up for an account using your Twitch or Kick credentials and claim the anonymous key from your client on your dashboard

    Finding your Charts API key:

    Location of Charts API key in What's Now Playing client

    While our platform is designed with streamers in mind, anyone can create an account and track their music listening habits. Your data contributes to the community charts and helps others discover great music.

    Yes! You can start tracking immediately without an account:

    1. Download and install the What's Now Playing client
    2. The client automatically creates an anonymous API key for you
    3. Your tracks are tracked anonymously but still contribute to the charts
    4. Later, create an account and claim your anonymous data in the dashboard
    5. All your historical data transfers to your new account

    This is perfect if you want to try the service before committing to an account.

    Linking your streaming platforms provides several benefits:

    • Profile Integration: Your streaming profiles appear on your charts profile
    • Follower/Subscriber Features: Required to access follower-only or subscriber-only setlists from other streamers
    • Exclusive Content: Offer your own follower-only or subscriber-only setlist downloads
    • Community Connection: Help viewers find your streams across platforms

    You can link multiple platforms and manage them all from your dashboard.

    🎵 Music & Charts

    Our charts are based on real-time play data, ranked by total play count across all users. Charts can be filtered by time period (last 24 hours, week, month, or all time) to see what's trending recently versus all-time favorites.

    Top Artists Ranking: Artists are ranked by the total number of unique song-user combinations. Each song by an artist gets one point for every different user who plays it.

    For example:

    • If 5 users each play 3 different songs by Artist A = 15 points
    • If 10 users all play the same 1 song by Artist B = 10 points
    • Artist A would rank higher

    This formula rewards both cross-user popularity and song diversity, giving a balanced view of which artists resonate most broadly across the streaming community.

    This can happen when:

    • Your DJ software or streaming setup doesn't provide complete metadata
    • The track is very new or obscure and not in our databases
    • The audio file has incomplete or corrupted tags

    If you consistently see "Unknown Artist" for tracks that should be identifiable, please let us know so we can investigate.

    Yes! Your dashboard shows your account settings, API key management, and basic statistics. Your profile page also displays your most played tracks, artists, and genre breakdown based on your listening history.

    "Tracks played" counts every single play, including replays of the same song. If you play a song 100 times, it counts as 100 plays.

    "Analysis based on X tracks" only includes plays where we have genre information from MusicBrainz. Some tracks can't be included in the genre analysis because:

    • The track couldn't be matched to MusicBrainz
    • The track was matched but MusicBrainz doesn't have genre data for it

    Important: Both numbers include replays! Your DJ Profile reflects your actual listening behavior. If you play certain songs more often, those genres will be weighted more heavily in your profile.

    Setlists are automatic recordings of your DJ sets and streaming sessions. They're created by grouping continuous plays during your streams.

    Features:

    • Automatically generated from your play history
    • Download in multiple formats: Text, CSV, or JSON
    • Shows track count, duration, and timestamps
    • Perfect for sharing your sets or analyzing your playlist choices

    Privacy Control: In your dashboard, you can set setlist privacy to:

    • Public: Anyone can view and download
    • Followers: Only your followers can access
    • Subscribers: Only your subscribers can access
    • Private: Only you can see them

    The Guess Game is an interactive feature that lets your viewers guess what track you're playing during your stream.

    How it works:

    • Track name and artist are masked (e.g., "_ _ _ _ _ _")
    • Letters are progressively revealed as viewers guess
    • Viewers participate via chat commands
    • Shows a live leaderboard of top guessers
    • Great way to engage your audience with your music selection

    The game appears on your profile when active, and viewers can access it directly to participate in real-time.

    ⚙️ Technical

    The What's Now Playing client supports most popular setups and even some obscure ones including:

    • Denon standalone controllers
    • Icecast-compatible setups (butt, MIXX, etc)
    • JRiver Media Player
    • Linux MPRIS2
    • MegaSeg
    • Radiologik
    • Serato
    • Spotify, Amazon Music, Winamp, and other players that support Windows Media notifications
    • Traktor
    • Virtual DJ
    • And many more!

    Currently, vinyl-only setups are not supported as the audio identification technology required would make this service prohibitively expensive to offer for free.

    CDJ support is in development but requires hardware testing. If you're in the SF Bay Area and have access to CDJ equipment, please contact us to help with development and testing.

    Unfortunately, Rekordbox support is not available due to restrictive licensing terms from AlphaTheta. We'd love to support it, but their closed platform policies make implementation legally risky. If you're interested in Rekordbox support, we encourage reaching out to AlphaTheta to request more open integration policies.

    If your tracks aren't showing up, try these troubleshooting steps:

    1. Verify your API key is correctly configured in the client (see image below)
    2. Ensure your DJ software or streaming setup is supported and detected by the client
    3. Look for any error messages in the client logs
    4. Try restarting both your DJ software and the WNP client

    Charts API key location in client:

    Location of Charts API key in What's Now Playing client

    Still having issues? Contact our support team.

    Yes, you can regenerate your API key at any time from your dashboard.

    What happens when you regenerate:

    • Your old API key stops working immediately
    • A new key is generated instantly
    • All your historical data remains intact
    • Update your What's Now Playing client with the new key

    Security note: If you suspect your API key has been compromised or shared publicly, regenerate it immediately to prevent unauthorized submissions.

    Anonymous users: If you're using an anonymous key and want to claim your data later, save your anonymous key before creating an account. You can then use the "Claim Anonymous Data" feature in the dashboard to transfer all your plays to your new account.

    🔒 Privacy & Data

    We collect basic track information including:

    • Song title and artist name
    • Album information (when available)
    • Timestamp when the track was played
    • Platform information (Twitch, Kick, etc.)

    We do not store any personal files, lyrics, or audio content.

    Yes! You have full control over your privacy settings:

    • Profile Visibility: Make your profile public or private
    • Chart Participation: Choose whether your plays appear on public charts
    • Data Export: Download your complete listening history anytime
    • Account Deletion: Permanently remove all your data

    Adjust these settings in your dashboard.

    We use multiple methods to accurately identify tracks:

    • ISRC codes for precise track identification
    • MusicBrainz database for rich metadata and genre information
    • Smart text normalization to handle variations in track titles and artist names
    • Context-aware matching using album and year information

    💬 Support

    We'd love to hear from you! You can:

    • Send us a message through our contact form
    • Join our community Discord for real-time support
    • Report technical issues on our GitHub repository

    Yes! What's Now Playing Charts is completely free to use. We're passionate about music discovery and building tools for the streaming community. The service is funded by the What's Now Playing project.