It’s time for group play! We have 2,990 songs this time, in 24-song groups1The last one’s got 13, you don’t like it call the cops. That means 125 groups! Slightly more than last time with only half the years. For the group stage, vote for as many songs as you like! Songs will be ranked based on how many upvotes they got compared to how many people voted in that round. 2For instance, if a group had 25 unique voters, and a song from that group got 15 upvotes, it would have a ranking of 60% After all groups are done, the top 768 songs from across all groups will advance to the playoffs.

…unless! After group play, but before the playoffs proper, there will be a wild card runoff! If an individual game places more than 10 songs into the top 768, songs 11+ per game will face off against songs 769+3Skipping any songs that would themselves be song 11+ for a given game in a play-in round.

We’ll be “feathering” groups; voting on group 98 will be active until Tuesday, December 19th at 10:00PM Pacific. Group 99 will start Tuesday and be active until Wednesday, and so on. Please listen to every song! Don’t just vote name recognition.

You can listen to all songs in group 98 in this handy YouTube playlist! (Don’t worry, songs will also be linked in the comments, where voting will take place)

You can work ahead if you like:

Again, voting for group 97 is open until Monday, December 18th at 10:00PM Pacific