The Game Guide

Points are time. Your active band earns 3 points every hour, around the clock. Almost everything you do - writing songs, practising, recording, promoting - spends them. You can only do so much in a week, so spend them where they matter.

One real day = one game week. Every night at 11:30pm UK time the world updates: records sell, streams count, charts recalculate, tours pay out, campaigns tick, and everything ages a week. Your dashboard shows the countdown in your own timezone.

Score and rank. Everything your band achieves feeds its score; the Rankings order every band in the world by it. Your rank updates hourly - the climb is the game.

One manager, many bands. Your account is a manager who can run as many bands as you like - create and switch from the Manager Dashboard. Points and actions belong to the band you're currently controlling.

Five vitals run your band: Happiness and Health are fuel - hard work drains them, and a miserable, burned-out band performs badly. Creativity feeds songwriting. Ability and Song Writing are craft - they grow with use and make everything you produce better.

Rest & Recover restores happiness and health. Don't grind your band into the ground - a rested band writes better songs and plays better shows.

Practice converts points into ability. Early on it's the best points you'll spend.

Write Songs turns points and creativity into tracks, each with a quality rating. Songs are the raw material for every single, EP and album - keep a stockpile.

Singles - one A-side and two B-sides, a producer, and studio points. The bread and butter: quick to make, chart fast. You can release one every 4 days.

EPs - 4-6 tracks, every 8 days. Bigger than a single, cheaper than an album, with their own chart.

Albums - 10-20 tracks, every 15 days. The big statement: the most expensive to record and the biggest seller when it lands.

Producers matter. A better producer costs more but lifts the record's rating - and the rating drives sales for the whole life of the release. Cheap producer on your best songs = money left on the table.

Where it sells is up to your popularity. A release goes on sale in every market where your popularity clears the bar: above 4 for singles, 12 for EPs and 24 for albums (a release falls back to your home region if nowhere qualifies). A record only sells, streams and charts where it's on sale, so that map is the ceiling on the whole run - and every release wizard shows it to you before you spend. It sells (and streams) every night while it's still fresh - sales fade as it ages. Watch it all on My Records, which opens on whatever is still selling tonight.

Artwork - upload cover art from the release page. Pure vanity. Essential.

Every market has its own charts for singles, EPs and albums, plus the World chart that counts everything everywhere. Positions update with the nightly sales run; your best-ever positions are kept forever on the release and your profile.

Streaming runs alongside sales - releases earn nightly streams (see the Streaming Chart), which pay royalties and feed your monthly listeners figure. Streams build more slowly than sales but keep paying long after the chart run.

Hit #1 in the world and the whole feed hears about it. There are achievements for the world Top 10 and #1 - and the season's chart-toppers tend to collect trophies too.

Records get certified on what they shift, forever. Singles, EPs and albums all climb the same four rungs, and the nightly run awards them automatically - there is nothing to claim. Once a rung is earned it is dated and it is yours: a certification is never taken back, even if the ladder is retuned later.

It is counted in units, not sales. Every sale is one unit, and every 150 streams is one more. That is roughly how the real industry has counted since streaming took over, and it means a record that sells modestly but streams for years still gets its due:

units = sales + streams / 150

• Silver - 1,000,000 units
• Gold - 5,000,000 units
• Platinum - 15,000,000 units
• Diamond - 50,000,000 units

A collab certifies once, for the record. Both names carry the badge - the split decides who earns what, not who gets the certification.

See the lot in one place on My Records: every record you are on, newest first, with what it sold last night, what it has sold all told, its highest world chart position and its certification. Going up a rung is a moment on the feed, so the world hears about it too.

Campaigns cost money AND points, run for a set number of nights, and boost a release (or the band) while they run. Book them from a release page or the Promotion hub. Pick one tier per method - you can run several methods at once on the same release.

Music video - the flagship: pick a director (their fee adds to the cost, the right one multiplies the effect - some specialise in your genre), wait out the shoot, then enjoy the biggest sales boost in the game. One live video per release.

Social push - fast, cheap reach with a shot at going viral. Radio rotation - steady popularity and sales in the markets you pick. Playlist pitch - boosts streams, not sales; aim it at markets warm to your genre.

Band-level campaigns - Advertising builds popularity in any market (even where nobody knows you - it's how you break new ground), and Press & PR builds notoriety with the odd tabloid scandal thrown in. All publicity is good publicity… mostly.

Pre-release booking: you can book campaigns on a recorded-but-unreleased record - they activate the night it first sells, so launch week hits with everything at once.

Results land every week in your inbox as The Weekly Rundown.

Go on Tour in any region where people know you: pick the venues, pay the costs, play the shows. Ticket sales scale with your popularity there - and the report ("The Damage") shows exactly what each night made and what state the band is in afterwards.

Touring is hard on happiness and health, but it's immediate cash and it counts toward the Tickets Sold leaderboard and the touring achievements. And unlike record income, tour money is always 100% yours.

You start in your home region. Popularity is tracked per region (0-100) - you only sell records, stream, and tour where people actually know you.

Expanding costs money. Once your home popularity reaches 25, you can buy your way into new markets from Band Upgrades - each has its own price tag (bigger market, bigger bill). Buying in gives you a toehold of popularity there; advertising, releases and time do the rest.

Every market has taste. World Tastes shows how warmly each country takes to each genre - a market that loves your genre sells and streams better for you. And every few weeks a genre wave sweeps a market - one genre surges there (sales AND streams multiplied) for a few weeks. Watch the feed for the announcement and time your releases to ride it: when the wave passes, the Wave Report crowns the band that rode it hardest, with an achievement to prove it.

Why collab? A collab sells wherever either band is popular - the engine uses the better band's popularity in every market. Team up with a band that's big where you're not and you're suddenly selling in places you've never toured. Works for singles, EPs and albums.

Finding a partner: flip on open to collabs in Collabs and you appear in every band's partner finder (and wear the collab chip on your profile). The finder ranks bands by the audience they'd add - popularity you don't have, where you don't have it.

The terms are yours to set. The lead picks the format, brings their tracks and the producer, and proposes the split: the featured band's share of the bill and of every sale, stream and point of score - anywhere from 20% to 50%. The lead can also ask the featured band to bring tracks of their own (up to 1 on a single, 2 on an EP, 5 on an album) - a bigger contribution deserves a bigger cut, and the wizard suggests one. The producer's price is locked into the offer, so the terms sheet you accept is the bill you pay.

Accepting: the offer lands in your inbox and in Collabs with the full tracklist and the maths. If tracks were asked of you, you pick which of your unused songs ride the record - their ratings feed the record's rating, so bring your best. The moment you accept, both bands pay their share and the record is out, credited "feat." to you everywhere - charts, profiles, catalogues, the lot.

The fine print: both bands' cooldowns for that format start; chart trophies and season awards stay with the lead band (achievements count for both names); offers expire after 7 days (both sides are told); declining can carry a note; a withdrawn offer tells the other band. Your tracks stay YOUR tracks - a song lent to a collab still belongs to you, it's just been used.

The Feed is the world's front page - releases, #1s, viral hits, milestones… Hit hype on a moment, or open its comments to join the conversation.

Rivalries - declare any band your rival from their profile. Every night it's a best-of-three: records sold this week, best world chart position, world popularity. Win the week and the feed hears about it. Bragging rights only - and that's the point.

Friend Groups give you a private feed of just your people; Compare puts any two bands head-to-head; Messages is band-to-band mail (and where the game writes to you).

Achievements - permanent milestones across releasing, songwriting, charts, promotion, sales, touring, wealth and fame. Once earned, never lost.

Your link. Every band you run has a link of its own, on the Refer a Friend page. It opens on that band's public profile, so whoever you send it to meets the band before the sign-up form.

What it pays. A friend who follows the link and starts a band gets 25 points straight away, which is a real head start in a band's first hour. When that band puts out its first single, the band whose link it was gets 5 points. As many friends as you like.

Which link counts. If somebody has clicked more than one of these, the last one they clicked is the one that counts.

Watching it. The page lists everyone who joined on this band's link, when they came and whether they have put a record out yet, with a running total across every band you run.

The game runs in seasons (roughly three months - the countdown is on your dashboard). Season stats track alongside all-time stats, so every season is a fresh race even for the giants.

Every season ends with the Awards - a full ceremony crowning Song, EP and Album of the Year, Most Streamed, Most Hyped, Road Warrior, Hitmaker, Newcomer and Artist of the Year. Winners and nominees are frozen forever - on the band's profile and in the manager's trophy cabinet.

Trophies are the long game. Ranks reset their race each season; silverware doesn't.

Patrons keep the game alive - and get: +1 points every hour for the active band, and the gold ★ on all their bands. From $4/month - link your Patreon in Manager Settings.