Questions, answered
Is it really free?
Yes. Every pack, every card, unlimited decks, no account and no card on file. Your PDFs are built in your own browser and the site is a stack of static files, so running it costs close to nothing and there is nothing to charge for. Printing is the only thing that costs you anything.
Where does the music come from?
Nowhere on this site. When you scan a card, your phone asks Apple Music and Deezer for the official 30-second preview of that track and plays it directly. No audio is hosted or copied here, and preview links are never stored — they expire, while track ids do not.
Do I need an account or an app?
No. Open the site in your phone browser and scan. On iOS, add it to the Home Screen if you want it to open full-screen like an app — that is optional.
Which playlists can I import?
Any public Spotify playlist imports with no login at all — Rewindy reads it server-side, up to the first 100 tracks. A private playlist you own needs the one-time Spotify login, because Spotify's API has only allowed apps to read playlists you own or collaborate on since 2026. YouTube Music works either way for any public or unlisted playlist, with nothing to set up; personal "My Mix" and Radio lists are generated per user and cannot be imported by anyone.
How does it know the original release year?
This is the hard part of the whole game. Stores report the release date of the edition they happen to sell, so a 1973 song comes back as 1988 because of a remaster. For your own imports, Rewindy asks MusicBrainz, Discogs and Wikidata too, weighs the answers and flags anything it is not confident about so you can check it before printing. For the ready-made decks the bar is higher: every year is either hand-checked or confirmed against the earliest known release of that exact recording, and any song neither could confirm was left out of the deck rather than guessed.
What do I print on?
65×65 mm cards, 12 per A4 sheet (6 if you use fold and glue). Print at 100% or "Actual size" — never "fit to page" — and duplex flipped on the long edge. 180–250 g/m² paper feels closest to real cards. Always run the alignment test page first: it tells you within seconds whether the year lands behind its own QR code.
Where is my deck stored?
In your browser on that one device, and nowhere else. Nothing is uploaded, so clearing your browser data clears your deck and there is no copy to restore it from. The card store is append-only by design: songs can be taken out of a pack, but the record behind a printed card is never deleted, because a deleted record would turn a card you already printed into a dead one.
Will my printed cards still work later?
Yes. The QR carries the track ids and the year itself, and the scanner deliberately ignores the domain in the code. Even if this site moved to a different address tomorrow, cards printed today keep working.
Are the ready-made decks the actual Spotify playlists?
The name and cover art are, and each deck links to the playlist it came from. The deck itself is a subset: 16 cards drawn from the playlist, skipping any song whose original release year could not be confirmed. Playlists also change over time, while a printed card does not — so treat a deck as a snapshot, not a mirror. Rewindy is not affiliated with Spotify.
What is the difference between Rewindy and the boxed game?
The boxed timeline game is a published product with a fixed set of songs chosen by its publisher. Rewindy is an independent tool that turns any playlist into cards you print yourself, so the deck is whatever you want it to be. The rules are the same game — see the rules page. Rewindy is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any board game publisher.
Can I use my cards as an expansion to a deck I already own?
Yes, and that is one of the better reasons to make a pack. The cards are 65×65 mm and play by the same rules, so a Rewindy pack shuffles straight into a deck you already have. One caveat: cards from another publisher carry that publisher's QR codes pointing at their own service, so scanning those needs their app. Rewindy's scanner reads Rewindy cards.
Can I order the cards printed and posted to me?
No. Rewindy makes the PDF and stops there — there is no shop, no checkout and nothing to ship. Print at home, or take the PDF to a copy shop; tick the 2 mm bleed option in the download step if you do, so they can trim it cleanly.
How many songs can a pack hold?
There is no limit built in. The PDF is generated in your own browser, so the practical ceiling is your phone or laptop running out of patience, not a plan you have to buy. A few hundred cards is fine; at some thousands you will notice the wait.
Can I play without an internet connection?
No. Scanning a card fetches the 30-second preview from Apple Music or Deezer at that moment, so the phone acting as DJ needs a connection. Everything else — your deck, the PDF, the site itself — works offline, but the music does not.
How many people can play?
Two to ten, same as the boxed game. Above six it is better in teams of two or three; one phone is enough for the whole table however many of you there are.
A year on a card is wrong. What now?
Tell us — the address is in the Impressum. For a card from one of the ready-made decks the year is either hand-checked or confirmed against the earliest known release of that exact recording, but that process is not perfect, and a fix made centrally reaches everyone rather than just your deck.
Still stuck?
The rules page covers how a round actually plays, and the printing page covers getting the PDF onto paper.