Juqed: The playlist belongs to everyone.

Juqed – my story in a nutshell: Juqed is a party jukebox where the playlist belongs to everyone. Guests can search for songs on their phones, add them to the queue, and vote on what plays next. Nobody can just skip whatever is currently playing. I came up with the idea in the summer of 2025. I was looking forward to a weekend with good friends, and I wanted an app like this: a shared playlist where everyone gets a say and nobody has to play DJ all night. I searched for one but couldn't find anything suitable. Either an expensive streaming subscription was required, third-party services wanted access to my device or the controls were so clunky that nobody would actually use them at a party. That weekend turned out differently, but the idea stuck. So I built it myself. The prototype, 'Music Explorer', became Juqed (a combination of 'jukebox' and 'queue'). The Mac becomes the music hub — guests just open a web page, no download required. The first real-life party tests produced features that would carry an evening: an Auto-DJ for when the queue runs dry, a blacklist for music that was not wanted that night and a fair use system that kept the queue varied. Juqed went live on the Mac App Store in May 2026 — and, since many hosts don't have a Mac, Juqed Go for iPhone and iPad followed shortly after. It has the same features as the desktop version, but uses Apple Music and doesn't require shared Wi-Fi. It can be started with a single tap. And that's where my personal history of growth and learning begins.