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

Past Platinum, the badge counts up. A Platinum record shows 2× Platinum at 30,000,000 units, and goes up to 3× Platinum at 45,000,000. Beyond that it's Diamond's job. A Diamond record shows 2× Diamond at 100,000,000 units, 3× at 150,000,000, and so on. Silver and Gold don't count up.

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.

The price is for one market. Every extra market you aim a campaign at adds 25% of its price again, so five markets cost ×2 and all fifteen ×4.5. The points don't change. The promotion pages add it up for the markets you tick before you pay.

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 the markets you're in (new ones you buy at the bottom of Home and Gear), 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 night on The 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.

Rooms and cities. Every country has 5 to 10 cities on its route, each with its own rooms, from 140 to 100,119 seats. You can book a room up to 4 times the size of the crowd you're likely to draw there, so the big rooms open up as you grow, and when you book a tour the route is filled in for you, a city a night. Your popularity is still counted per country, not per city.

World tour. Pick World tour on the tour page to play as many countries as you like back to back, in one booking. Each one is played exactly as if you'd booked it on its own, at the same 7 points a gig, and Auto picks the rooms if you'd rather not. Above 60 popularity, a gig holds its country for the next 5 nights, so one world tour every 5 nights holds them all.

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 - no label ever touches it.

Running costs only apply to the bands with the most popularity. They're worked out from your band's average popularity across all 15 markets, and a market you're not in counts as 0. Up to 60 there are no running costs, and a gig pays exactly what it always did. Over 60, each gig's crew, trucks and production take a share of the takings: a sliver at first, then more steeply, up to 35% from 90. You keep 57% of a gig's takings as profit, so at the very top you keep 22% of the takings once the running costs are paid. The tour pages show your average and your share before you book.

Five things your band can own. Somewhere to live, a way to travel, instruments, a studio and a live rig, one of each, from a room in a shared flat all the way up to a private island. They're all on Home and Gear, standing outside your place in one picture, where Band Upgrades used to be (buying new markets is still there, at the bottom).

• Home - about 4 health and 3 happiness back every night, up to about 14 and 10 at the top.
• Travel - gigs wear the band down 20% less, up to 70% less.
• Instruments - every practice point goes 10% further, up to 50%.
• Studio - about 1 creativity back every night, up to about 5.
• Live rig - every gig rates 1 higher, up to 5.

The home and studio give back about that much, give or take one, so the mornings don't all read the same. Nothing goes past the top of its scale, and nothing works on its own: better instruments make practice go further, but you still have to practise.

None of it touches sales, streams, ticket money, campaigns, the charts or points. Ever. It all lands on things your band already has, and you still spend the points to use them.

Everything you own has upkeep, taken every night with the nightly update, out of the night's takings: from £250 a night at the bottom to £800,000 at the top. Each rung's upkeep is seven to eight times the one below it while what it does only goes up a step, so the bottom rungs are a bargain for a small band and the top ones cost a fortune for very little. That's the point of them.

The entourage. Your first two things cost their own upkeep. Each one after that adds 10% to the whole upkeep for the people who look after it all, so all five cost 30% more than their upkeep added up.

Buying needs the price plus seven nights of the new upkeep in the bank, so the cheapest thing, at £10,000, needs £11,750 on its own. Trading up swaps what's in a slot for a higher rung: a quarter of what you paid for the old one comes off the price, and the seven nights are of the new upkeep. Selling gets a quarter of what you paid back straight away, any time, even while your upkeep is unpaid. It's the way out before the bailiffs come.

Unpaid nights. If the bank can't cover a night's whole upkeep, nothing is taken and nothing is owed, but nothing you own works until a night's upkeep is paid: nothing back from the home or the studio, and nothing extra on practice or gigs. You get a message on the first unpaid night and again on the fourth. After seven unpaid nights in a row the thing with the highest upkeep is repossessed, with nothing back for it, and the count starts again on what's left.

A retired band pays nothing and gets nothing back. Everything it owns is kept for it until it comes back.

Home and Gear and your dashboard say how many nights the bank covers your upkeep for, and the Rundown says what it took each night.

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.

The top has to be held. Up to 60 popularity, a region slips 2% a night, as it always has. Above that it slips faster the higher it is, up to 6% a night at 100. Campaigns add less up there too (a quarter of their popularity at 100), and everything you run in one region only adds so much a night between them. What holds the top is playing: a gig there in the last 5 nights, or a record in that region's top 10, cuts the extra slide there by half, and both together by three quarters. Notoriety works the same way above 75.

Watching it. The arrow beside a region's popularity, on your dashboard, your band's page and the tour and promotion pages, is how far it moved between the last two nightly updates: ▲ up, ▼ down, or steady if it moved less than 0.5 either way. Your dashboard also says who's top in each region you're in, and Market Leaders lists the top band in every region after each update, with how many nights in a row it's been top; bands on the same number are joint top, and nobody's called top until one of them pulls ahead.

Expanding costs money. Once your home popularity reaches 25, you can buy your way into new markets from the bottom of Home and Gear - each has its own price tag (bigger market, bigger bill). Buying in starts your popularity there at 5, so the market is ready for a single straight away. 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, signings… 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. And in every region where you're both above 60 popularity, the same three rounds are played on that region's own numbers: whoever wins there takes 0.5 popularity off the other band in that region, and gains nothing themselves.

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, Collab of the Year, Chart Regular, Critics' Choice, Wave Rider, Market Leader, Label of the Year and Artist of the Year. Winners and nominees are frozen forever - on the band's profile and in the manager's trophy cabinet.

Newcomers get their own awards. Bands that started this season have their own version of every award except Label of the Year. For example: Newcomer Song of the Year and Most Streamed Newcomer. The best new band of the season is Newcomer of the Year. The newcomer awards open the ceremony, before the main awards.

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

Labels are player-run businesses: a manager founds one, signs OTHER players' bands to real contracts, and both sides profit - or don't. Browse them all in the directory, and see who's winning on the leaderboard.

• The advance - up to £1,000,000 lands in your account the moment you sign (up to £25,000 while your band is under 30 days old). It's yours to spend immediately - on regions, videos, whatever moves you up.
• Nightly exposure - every night the label's bills are paid, your popularity grows in every region you're in, with a bigger push in the label's home country. Like a campaign, it adds less the nearer a region is to the top (a quarter of it at 100).
• Funded campaigns - the label can book promotion for your releases and for the band itself, and pay for it from its treasury. It doesn't cost anyone any points, and you get a message when it happens. Their treasury, your boost. They run in their own lane, on top of your own campaigns, so they still help when yours are maxed out. They can add up to ×1.5 more on sales and streams.
• Your label on your records - every single, EP and album you release while you're signed says which label it came out on. It stays on the record after your deal ends.

The price: the label takes a cut (5-30%, fixed at signing) of your release income - sales and streaming royalties. Tour money is never touched. And until the advance is repaid, 50% of your post-cut income goes to paying it down ("recoupment") - so a big advance is a loan against your future hits, not free money.

Getting signed: flag yourself "Looking for a deal" in My Label so scouts see it on your profile, or apply directly to any label that's open for applications. A band can sign or apply once it's 7 days old. Offers land in My Label with the full terms - length (8/16/26/52 weeks), cut, advance - and expire after 7 days. Read the terms; they're frozen once you sign.

Getting out: serve the term, or buy out early (the unrecouped advance plus an exit fee - the cost is always shown before you confirm). Labels can drop you too, eating whatever advance you haven't repaid.

• The cut - your roster's sales and streams pay into the treasury every night (their tours never do), plus recoupment on advances you've paid out.
• Label of the Year - the label whose roster earns the most each season takes a trophy at the ceremony, and the leaderboard shows the race live.
• The empire - a public label page with your own logo and banner, a roster of up to 8 bands, and your name over all of it.

The risk: founding costs £1,000,000 (it becomes the treasury), and upkeep runs £2,500 per signed band, every night. A treasury that can't pay stops all perks - and after 7 unpaid nights in a row the label goes bust, publicly: contracts void, treasury gone, feed watching. Money moves into the treasury freely but never back out - only disbanding (empty roster) returns what's left.

One live label per manager · one deal per band at a time · signing your own band is allowed but with a £0 advance, no exposure, no funded campaigns and no cut - the perks are for arms-length signees (nice try).

The Founder's Licence: founding needs a one-off £5 (or $7) licence, bought on the founding page. It's permanent - never consumed, and it covers founding again if your label goes bust. It buys the door, not the empire: the £1,000,000 founding cost, the treasury, the signings and the bust risk are all in-game, same rules for everyone. Everyone who had donated before 20 October 2026, or was a patron on the day, got one on the house as a thank you; since then everybody buys it, at the same price.

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.