For The 885 Greatest Songs Of The 21st Century: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the 885 Greatest Songs countdown is and who runs it

For The 885 Greatest Songs Of The 21st Century is a public-vote music countdown run by WXPJ, a radio station that hosts the ballot on its own xpn.org domain instead of renting a national contest tool. The project is framed in the station's own words as the soundtrack of the century: 25 years of moments distilled into one epic playlist, chosen entirely by the audience. That framing matters, because unlike a readers-choice ballot where businesses campaign for support, here the entries are songs and the voters are listeners with personal histories attached to them.

The vertical is best-of, but the subject is cultural rather than commercial. The fixed size of 885 positions gives the countdown its shape: every submission of up to 10 favorites feeds a single ranked list that the station then presents on air. The ballot sits at xpn.org under the station's Vinyl At Heart branding, which is the same masthead that carries its newsletters, membership and volunteer pages, so a supporter lands in familiar surroundings rather than on an unfamiliar voting tool.

Because the organizer is a broadcaster, the reward for participating is not a plaque or a badge but the chance to hear your own taste confirmed on the radio. That shapes who votes: people who already listen to the station, already care about its programming, and want their favorites represented in a list that will be talked about for years.

The dated history of this countdown

Confirmed runs of the countdown cover 2024 and 2025, which is why it reads as a yearly event rather than a single experiment. The dated anchors for the current cycle are specific. Voting closes on Wednesday, November 13 at 11:59 PM, and the station describes the participation stretch as voting between now and November 13th, meaning the form is open when the page is live rather than waiting on a separate opening announcement.

The on-air outcome is dated too: the broadcast of the 885 Greatest Songs of the 21st Century Countdown begins on December 5, 2024, which tells supporters roughly how long the gap between the last ballot and the first reveal runs. Not everything about the cycle is fixed in public, however. WXPJ has not printed a roster of song categories or the split of the 885 positions on its ballot page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

That gap is worth stating plainly because countdown ballots are often assumed to be a single undifferentiated list when they may in fact be organized by genre, decade or theme. Nothing on the current page settles the question, and the honest position for any supporter is that the ballot in front of them is the authority. The December broadcast date tied to the 2024 cycle is the one post-voting fact the station has put in writing, and it anchors the whole calendar: picks in by mid-November, results on air in early December.

How a supporter votes today

The mechanic is deliberately simple, which suits a music poll aimed at a general listening audience. A supporter opens the ballot on the station's own site, considers the inspiration playlist the page offers and the resources linked from the station's 885 Countdown page, and then submits up to 10 personal favorite songs of the 21st century. There is no nomination round described, no bracket, and no category navigation published on the ballot page; the act of voting is a single pass of picks submitted between now and November 13th.

Because the ceiling is ten picks per ballot, the choices carry weight. A supporter who wants a deep cut represented has to decide whether it earns one of the ten slots over a more obvious anthem, and that decision is exactly the conversation the station is inviting with its soundtrack-of-the-century framing. The playlist and resource links exist precisely because the organizers expect people to deliberate before committing.

Submission happens on the page itself during the live window, and the deadline of Wednesday, November 13 at 11:59 PM is the only gate. After that the supporter's role shifts from voter to listener: the ranked results arrive as a broadcast countdown beginning December 5, 2024, where the full 885-position list is revealed on air. No purchase, login or entry fee appears anywhere in the published participation instructions, so the only cost of taking part is the few minutes spent choosing ten songs that matter to you.

Where this ballot sits among its neighbors

Across this state, public-vote programs mostly put businesses and services on the slate. The Asbury Park Press Readers' Choice program, Bergen & Morris Top Dentists, the Best of Bergen Community's Choice Awards, the Best of Jersey Shore Contest, Best of New Jersey and the Jersey Bites Monmouth County Readers' Choice all ask their audiences to pick shops, restaurants, clinics and local institutions.

The 885 countdown stands apart in three ways. First, the entries are songs rather than businesses, so no advertiser relationship colors the field. Second, the ballot runs on the organizer's own website instead of a national contest platform, which keeps the experience inside the station's brand. Third, the output is an on-air broadcast rather than a printed or web-only winners list, giving the results a longevity that a web announcement rarely matches.

For a supporter weighing where to spend effort, the difference is motivational as much as structural. Business ballots reward organized outreach to customers; a music countdown rewards genuine enthusiasm and word of mouth among people who share a taste. The fixed count of 885 positions also means the drama of the reveal is cumulative, with the broadcast building toward the top of the list, which is a format none of the commercial ballots in the region replicate.

Strengthening support for your picks in this countdown

Because each supporter gets one ballot of up to 10 picks, the only lever that moves this countdown is the number of distinct people who submit. If a song you love deserves a slot, the effective move is to make sure friends and fellow listeners cast their own ballots before the November 13 cutoff, each choosing their own favorites. The station's inspiration playlist and the 885 Countdown page resources are useful anchors for those conversations, since they give hesitant voters something to react to.

On outside help, WXPJ has published no rule addressing purchased or coordinated support, so no organizer position exists to quote. What the format itself tells you is that a flood of identical ballots looks unlike the organic spread of a listener community, and countdown organizers keep discretion over what they count. Anyone considering paid support for a public ballot can compare what is offered at buy award votes against the ballot's own terms before deciding. The safest posture, and the one that matches how this countdown was designed, is genuine outreach: ask people who actually love the song to spend five minutes on the form, and let ten real ballots do what one manufactured hundred cannot.