RoomDJ

Class song voting, minus the bad words. Students suggest songs and vote on what plays next from their Chromebooks. The teacher's computer plays the winners. A filter keeps it school-clean.

🍎 Start a room (teachers) 🎒 Join a class (students)

Why I made it

I'm Dalton, a high school engineering and CS teacher in New Jersey. Music in the room makes work time better. Taking requests out loud does not: half the class shouts, the other half asks for songs I cannot play at school, and I end up DJing instead of teaching. So I built a thing. Kids pick, kids vote, the filter says no so I don't have to.

How a class works

The teacher opens a room at roomdj.com/host and signs in with Spotify. The class code goes up on the board.
Students join at roomdj.com with the code. They get a made-up nickname like "Brave Otter". No accounts, nothing to type about themselves.
They suggest and vote. Every suggestion is checked first. The song with the most votes plays next on the teacher's computer.
At the end, a quick recap: the class's Top 5, who picked the crowd favorite, a few fun stats.

📺 Projector on a different computer? Open the board at roomdj.com/board on the projector computer. It shows the class code, what's playing and the votes, and plays nothing itself, so the music can come from your laptop or any other device.

What it looks like

A real class on RoomDJ (tap any picture to see it full size).

The teacher control screen: the class code, the song playing with its cover, and the queue with votes — **The teacher screen.** Class code on the left, the song playing in the middle, the queue on the right: veto, ban or bump any song.

RoomDJ Settings, Songs tab: thumbs down votes set to On, counts hidden; scores never go below 0; thumbs down per student per class; Ghost thumbs up — **Settings: you decide how voting works.** 👎 votes can be **Off** (students only 👍, so every song gets its turn), **On, counts hidden** (students can 👎, but only you see how many, so nobody gets piled on), or **On, counts shown**. **Scores never go below 0** keeps every student's song in line to play. Limit 👎 per student, and turn on **Ghost 👍** to quietly give a song that's been waiting a little love. Save it as your default, or change it for just this room.

The Room menu open: change code, change times, lock suggestions, students, close room — **Room menu.** Change the code or times, pause suggestions, see students, close the room.

The Lists menu open: Blocked today, Top 5, Favorites, Resting songs, Play recap — **Lists menu.** What got blocked today, the Top 5, favorites, songs resting, and the recap.

The projector board: the class code, now playing and the queue in big type — **The board.** For the projector, on any computer. It shows the code, the song and the votes, and plays nothing, so the music can come from your laptop.

A student page on a Chromebook: the queue with thumbs up and thumbs down — **Students vote** 👍 or 👎 from their Chromebooks. Names like "Splendid Phoenix" are made up for them.

The Back to work screen a student sees after suggesting a song, with a countdown — **Back to work!** After a pick, a student waits a few minutes (you choose how long) before the next one.

Recap slide: Period recap, 4 songs, 11 votes — **The recap.** An end-of-class awards show on the projector, with the #1 song playing.

Recap slide: the decades of the songs played — Fun stats from that class only: decades, genres, longest song, top voter.

Recap slide: Top 5, number 4, September by Earth, Wind and Fire — The Top 5, counted down to #1.

What keeps it school-clean

Explicit versions are swapped for the clean version, or blocked when there isn't one.
Word lists, plus your own blocked words and banned songs.
An AI check reads what each new song is about (drugs, drinking, violence and so on), and checks album covers too. When it isn't sure, the song waits for the teacher in "Needs a look" instead of slipping through.
The teacher can veto, ban, lock suggestions, or play a pick of their own any time.

The checker is good, not perfect. It is not a replacement for a teacher in the room.

Students' privacy

No student accounts, no names, no emails. Nicknames are made up for them.
Students never touch Spotify. Only the teacher's computer plays music.
A room's songs, votes and nicknames are deleted when it closes (at the end of class, or the end of the day).

Details in Privacy & legal.

What it costs

Nothing. RoomDJ is free for teachers: no ads, no payments. Each teacher needs Spotify Premium and a free "Spotify app" of their own, which takes about five minutes. Here's how.

Also by me

teachChat is my classroom chat tool, with polls and teacher moderation. More classroom tools at daltonjfowler.com.

RoomDJ is not made by or affiliated with Spotify or Apple. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.