Made with care.
Shaped by you.
Every feature, release and milestone since the first card was drawn. We build ComposerDeck for the love of the craft, we listen closely to the musicians who use it, and the product will keep evolving. Something you'd like to see? We read every message.
A new way to draw: Simple and Studio
The draw screen is rebuilt around the cards. Simple, the default, deals your hand on a game table where every card shows how rare it is (Common, Rare, Legendary), Legendary cards shine and take turns when several land, and you pick a style, a card count and an optional malus in two taps. Studio is the same table with every control around it: faders, card types, decks, presets, session length and notes. Switching never moves your cards, and your choice is remembered on your device. Draw a hand.
Every hand has a difficulty
Harder cards count for more, and Legendary cards and a malus raise the multiplier: each hand rates from Easy to Brutal, and the rating is saved with your draw. The leaderboard has a new Hardest tab for the players who take on the toughest hands, takes show how hard their hand was, and the weekly challenge shows its cards the way the draw deals them. We also reviewed the difficulty of every card against one written rubric.
Locks, favorites and copies that answer
With cards locked, the big button now redraws the others instead of dealing a new hand, and a line tells you how many free redraws are left before a new hand replaces them. A saved card fills its heart, saving the same hand twice no longer makes a copy, and copying a card shows a check.
Keep listening while you look around
A take you start from Listen, a profile or the weekly challenge now keeps playing when you move to another screen, with a small player above the tab bar to pause it or close it. Tap its title to open the take: it carries on where it was instead of starting over. Listen also puts the takes first, with its numbers on one line.
Draw first, tips after
No more guided tour over an empty table when you arrive: you draw your first hand, and the tips come after, one at a time. The first visit to Studio shows a single tip, and the full tour is one tap on the ? away. On every page, the ? now sits in the header instead of floating over the content. Small text is larger and the dimmest grey is brighter, so everything reads more easily.
The iPhone app gets the new draw screen
Version 2.9 brings Simple and Studio to the iPhone and iPad app, with a tap you can feel when you lock, save or land a Legendary card, a new floating tab bar with real icons, buttons that answer every press, one background color everywhere and notices you can read at a glance.
Presets that stay where you saved them
Saving your studio setup in one tab could quietly erase a preset you had just created in another, because each one rewrote the whole setup from its own copy. The server now merges only what changed, so your presets survive. And if your connection drops while the studio loads, you get a Retry button instead of an endless spinner. The iPhone app gets both in version 2.8.1.
Deleting your account from the iPhone app works again
The delete button in the iPhone app was being refused by our server, which did not recognise the app's real address. Fixed on our side, no update needed.
Under the hood
Web sign-in now uses the PKCE flow: coming back from Apple, Google or Spotify, the address bar carries a one-time code instead of your session. Takes hidden by moderation no longer count in the leaderboard, deck cards always show their official wording, custom covers are reviewed image by image, and generous hourly limits on comments and likes keep spam out.
Public decks get their own page
Like takes, a public deck now has a real page at composerdeck.com/d/<slug>: the cards, the creator's name, a one-click draw from the deck, and a proper preview in iMessage and Slack. The share link in My Decks points there, and public decks are listed in the sitemap. Four official decks open the gallery: Songwriting Sprint, Finish It, Odd Meters Bootcamp and Chord Progression Starter.
Decks, cards face up
Open a deck in the studio and every card is laid out face up, with its full instruction, difficulty and genres, next to a summary of the card types, how to play it in three steps and a share button. Covers now show whole in card format in the community library, on your profile and in My Decks, and long card titles stay inside the card. When no deck is open, My Decks shows your decks at a glance, how a deck works and the freshest community decks instead of an empty page. The iPhone app gets all of it in version 2.8.1. Browse the library.
Genre pages become guides, and four guides built from the deck
Each of the eleven genre pages now opens with what makes the genre tick, three constraints that work in it and the mistakes to avoid, before the card list. On the blog: 33 songwriting prompts, 25 production constraints, odd time signature exercises and 20 chord progressions to steal, plus a monthly what's new.
Version 2.8 hits the App Store
Notifications, real pages for shared takes, the weekly digest after a draw, and this month's community fixes now live on iPhone too. If you play on your phone, this is the update to grab.
Sign in with Google
On the web, you can now continue with Google, next to Apple and Spotify. The iPhone app stays with Apple and Spotify.
The weekly digest, if you want it
After a draw, the studio can offer one Friday email: the community's best takes and the new brief. It asks once. If you say no, it will not ask again. You can still subscribe from your profile.
Notifications
A bell now sits in the studio header, on desktop and on your phone. Likes and comments on your takes, and badges you earn, land there as they happen, and one tap opens the take in question. The plumbing had been running quietly for months; nobody could see it.
Every shared take gets its own page
Share a take and the link now opens a real page: the brief you drew, card by card, the audio, your name, and a way into the app. It works without signing in, it looks right in iMessage and Slack, and search engines can finally find the music the community makes.
Community fixes you asked for
The USER tab of the search is back (it had been failing silently on genre filters). Comments show up the moment you post them. MALUS cards can be contributed to the community deck. Private profiles are now anonymous in the leaderboard, the weekly board and the badges, not just on the profile page.
Fairer billing when a payment hiccups
If a renewal fails, you keep Pro for seven days while your bank sorts it out, with a banner on the upgrade page telling you what is going on. The checkout also refuses to start a second subscription on top of an active one.
Under the hood
Fonts are served from composerdeck.com instead of Google, so a page load no longer talks to a third party. You can pinch to zoom in the web app again. Share links, the leaderboard and deck pages use your display name everywhere.
Version 2.7: the iOS app catches up
One big update for the App Store: the weekly challenge, the public Deck Gallery, custom deck covers, display names, draw archiving and all the recent draw improvements now live on iOS too. If you play on your phone, this is the release to grab.
The draw shows its hand
The card count panel now tells you how many cards actually match your filters, greys out counts you can't reach, and says so when a narrow genre or type selection would shrink your hand. No more pulling one card and wondering where the other five went.
The community challenge goes weekly
One shared brief for everyone, every week, anchored on Monday. A full week gives you real time to write, the boards fill up properly, and curated picks set the tone. Old daily links keep working: they land on their week.
The public Deck Gallery
Browse and search every public deck the community has built, right inside the app. Find a teaching deck, a genre bootcamp or a malus gauntlet, load it and draw.
Custom deck covers, with credit where it's due
Deck creators can upload their own cover art, reviewed before it goes public. Creator names now appear on shared deck pages and on the card backs in the studio.
ComposerDeck Pro is live
Our first paid tier: €3.99 a month, €29.99 a year, or €79 once for Founder Lifetime. Pro unlocks PNG and print-at-home PDF exports of your hand as real playing cards, an advanced stats panel on your profile, named studio presets, your complete draw history, and extra headroom across decks and submissions. The daily practice stays free, as promised.
Your name, everywhere it should be
Display names now show on every public surface: feeds, submissions, decks and profiles. The name you chose is the name people see.
Tidy up your draw log
Archive old draws from your profile and keep the workspace focused on what you're composing now.
Cards you can hear
Version 2.6 opens with sound. Nine custom sounds wired into the gestures you already use, with haptics where they add to it: card flips timed to the reveal, shuffle, save, a MALUS arm sound of its own, and studio faders that notch under your finger.
A fresh Daily Challenge, every single day
The Daily Challenge now lands reliably every morning, and the Hot feed ranks community tracks by real activity over the last 24 hours.
ComposerDeck 2.5.1 hits the App Store
The Decks update reaches iPhone, with mobile polish across the submissions and detail pages.
Real waveforms and inline players
Audio submissions now draw their true waveform and play inline in the feed, on profiles and on detail pages. No more leaving the page to hear a track. Decks also joined the app's main navigation.
Decks are here
ComposerDeck 2.5, our biggest update yet. Build your own deck of constraint cards and share it with a single link: up to 20 decks of 100 cards each, mixing catalogue cards with your own approved creations. Draw 100% from the deck or blend it with the regular engine. Read the announcement →
The community leaderboard
See who's shipping. The leaderboard is now one tap away in the studio navigation.
SoundCloud embeds, follows and renames
Paste a SoundCloud link on a submission and the track plays right on the page. Follow your favorite producers to keep up with their work, and rename your submissions any time.
The Daily Challenge debuts
One shared brief for the whole community. Same cards for everyone, refreshed daily, no excuses.
A guided tour for newcomers
First draw? An onboarding tour now walks you through the studio, step by step.
Version 2.0: welcome to the Studio
The biggest redesign in ComposerDeck's history. The Draw Console rebuilds the whole drawing experience around a studio metaphor: faders for Theory, Sound, Form, Risk and Energy, a transport, and a session timer to keep you honest.
Community pages, rebuilt
Search, contribute, share and submit audio all got full redesigns, plus a proper submissions index with a detail page for every track.
Profile badges
Profiles now show a rack of unlocked badges. Earn them by drawing, submitting and showing up.
The journal, version two
The blog got a full three-column redesign with a featured article, most-read rankings and reader reactions on every piece.
A homepage that shuffles
The landing page learned a new card-shuffle choreography, synced with the animation inside the app. Sharing any ComposerDeck link now shows rich previews too.
ComposerDeck lands on the iOS App Store
The app goes native. Download it on iPhone, sign in with Apple, and draw wherever the ideas find you.
Malus Mode
Flip the toggle and one card in your hand becomes a MALUS: a rule you cannot break. Twenty penalty cards at launch, confetti when you dare, plus quick genre filters to set up a draw faster. Read the announcement →
Submit audio from any draw
Finish a sketch, upload it straight from the draw, and it appears in the community Listen feed with likes, sharing and video embeds built in.
The newsletter opens
One curated card combo and one essay, straight to your inbox. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Musical Roulette becomes ComposerDeck
New name, new home at composerdeck.com. The roulette grew into a deck.
Profiles, favorites and the first submissions
Accounts got real profiles with your instruments and a private option, favorite card combos, and the very first audio submissions.
The first public version
The card draw engine goes live under its original name, Musical Roulette, alongside the blog's first articles. The daily practice opens its doors.
Where it all started
Months before anything went public, ComposerDeck was already taking shape on the workbench: the constraint-card concept, the draw engine, the first deck of cards, the site and the first essays were designed, prototyped and rewritten until they felt right. By the time the first version shipped, it was already a complete working studio.
The deck keeps growing.
Pull a hand and see for yourself.