The sound desk is the last part of a competition still running on physical media. A coach hands over a USB stick with four MP3s on it, two named Track 03.mp3. Another emails theirs the night before. A third has it on a phone and assumes there'll be a cable. Someone spends the morning building a folder structure that only they understand, and then has to stay at the desk all day because nobody else can navigate it.
Competition music moves that job to the fortnight before, and spreads it across the people who actually own the files.
Clubs upload their own, with the link they already have
There's no new credential to hand out. Each club's existing competition PIN — the one they already use for entry submission and coach leaderboard access — opens an upload page for their own gymnasts. They attach each gymnast's floor music, and it's in.
From the Music tab you can see how it's going at a glance: 18 of 24 gymnasts have music. That number is the whole chase-up list. Instead of wondering who hasn't sent theirs in, you can see it, and nudge those clubs with a week to spare rather than discovering the gap at 8:40am.
The sound desk gets a screen, not a folder
On the day, the player is a single page listing the gymnasts in running order, with a filter for the round that's actually happening. Select a gymnast, their track loads, press play. The space bar toggles play and pause — because the person at the sound desk is watching the floor, not the screen — and skipping to the next or previous gymnast pre-loads their track without playing it, so you're cued up and silent while the previous gymnast salutes.
Mocked-up recreation of the sound desk player — filtered to the running round, with the next track pre-loaded and silent.
Your sound operator doesn't need an account
This is the detail that makes it usable by a volunteer. The sound desk is very often a parent who turned up on the day, and you are not going to create them a ChalkItUp login at 8am.
Instead, generate an access code from the Music tab and send them the player link with it. They get the player and nothing else — no competition settings, no entries, no scores, no way to wander into a screen they shouldn't. You can reset the code at any time, which is worth doing after an event if the link went out over a club WhatsApp group.
As an admin you can open the player directly without a code. The code exists purely so you can hand the sound desk to someone who isn't you.
It tidies up after itself
Music files are other people's property and there's no reason for us to sit on them indefinitely, so we don't. Music is stored for the life of the competition and deleted automatically 3 days after you mark it complete.
If you want to keep a copy — for a club that's asked for theirs back, or because the same gymnasts compete again next month — there's a Download all music button that gives you the lot as a single ZIP. Do it before the three days are up.
Worth saying plainly: three days after completion, the files are gone. That's deliberate, and it's the right default for holding other people's media — but it does mean the ZIP is something to grab on the Monday after, not the following month.
What you need
Competition music is included with Standard and above. If you're on Standard, it's already switched on and sitting in the sidebar of your next competition — the only setup is generating an access code and sending your clubs their upload link.
Retire the USB stick
Let clubs upload their own floor music, and hand your sound desk one screen and a code.
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