We opened the Verse studio a little over a year ago, letting anyone turn a stray idea into a finished track. Since then, nine million of you have composed with Verse, and the range of what you have made keeps surprising us. We have watched roommates trade theme songs, parents score bedtime stories, and streamers build choruses live with thousands of listeners. Some composers write for an audience of one; others have quietly become the soundtrack of whole communities.

Today we are announcing that through the coming year, we will fund a total of $1 million to the composers whose work moves this community most. We are opening the season with the Winter of Verse — a celebration of the pieces that make us hum along, sit up straight, press repeat, or simply say "again."

WoV Vol. 1 | December 2026

The Winter of Verse (WoV) runs in weekly volumes, and Vol. 1 begins this Friday, December 4th. We are distributing the first $120,000 of the prize pool to the composers behind the 400 most-loved tracks published on Verse during the volume. "Most-loved" means exactly what it sounds like: saves, replays, and shares from real listeners on the community charts, weighted so a devoted small audience counts as much as a viral spike.

Each Friday at noon ET we open a new volume, and each following Thursday at midnight we close it and tally the charts. You do not need to enter anything — every public track you publish during a volume is automatically in. Compose in any genre, any language, any length. The charts reset every week, so a quiet first volume costs you nothing.

How payouts work

When a volume closes, the top 400 tracks earn their composers a share of that volume's pool, scaled by chart position — no track earns less than $100, and the volume's most-loved piece earns $10,000. Payouts land in your Verse wallet within five days, and you can transfer them out at any time. If several of your tracks chart in the same week, each one pays. Full mechanics, eligibility, and the volume calendar live on the Winter of Verse page.

This is the first of many seasons. If you have been waiting for a reason to publish the piece sitting in your drafts, let this be it. Open the studio, press Compose, and show us what winter sounds like.