The Perfect CD Experiment

[Xavori]

tl;dr Too much of the game is beyond the player's control right now to be considered a top notch tycoon/strategy game. But much of what's needed shouldn't be that hard to change. And in the meantime, the game still is fun.

First, all of this is on hard difficulty. Like a lot of tycoon games, that only means starting out is harder. I'm at the point in the game where nothing is hard anymore, and I'm only still running the band for experiments and to collect a few achievements before I start a new band.

So I wanted to see just how much song quality mattered in terms of things like audience interest, CD sales, etc. To that end, I came up with two CD-based experimetns, and this is the first. The next will be another 500k CD contract, but has absolute garbage for all the songs other than those needed to meet those requirements.

I created 10 songs of 100 quality. I recorded them at 100% recording quality. I made sure none of them were the instantly popular songs from RNG which turned out to be pretty easy since none of the 10 I wrote won the lottery. I then made singles of all 10 songs and made sure I had plenty of copies on hand for all my gigs while I waited for the release date. Then I went on tour to grind up as much popularity as possible for the songs (hence the need for singles...grinding pop without them is nearly impossible, and even with them is much, much slower than the actual full CD release). Once I could release the full CD, I did so and then went and stayed on tour the entire time the CD was at #1 on the charts.

Some quick bits that came up:

1. You cannot hit #1 in the charts without the 500k contract. You will not keep the #1 spot past 27 weeks, and more likely 26. I've now done several 500k contracts and that's how it always works out. This is the first big thing that takes away player control and really, any point in trying to do more than merely meeting the requirements for that contract. Just make a CD that meets the 500k contract requirements and tada, you win at the CD chart part of the game with one caveat.

2. That caveat is band popularity. That one stat drives literally everything about your band's ultimate success and profitability. And it's mindlessly easy to push this stat up. Just go on tour with any music set that can hit 100% audience interest. You'll gain 1-3 points of popularity in the city you play every time you play that set along with the band popularity that trickles in from nearby, CD sales, etc.

3. 100% audience interest requires RNG because you MUST have a popular song. You only need one ever though as you can just keep reusing it for all your gigs even if you change the rest of the set.

Even if I didn't mention anything else, that takes away a huge part of the strategy tycoon games are supposed to have. You are required to get a lucky RNG roll. You don't have to have any real strategy beyond sticking that one lucky song with whatever else is in your gig as one lucky song can spike 40 points of audience interest even if you mess up the audience energy a little bit.

side note: Screwing up energy a lot will screw up the final gig score, but it's not really that hard to get energy close enough or even always correct in a gig. I posted a video example at the end where I show just getting close with an RNG song really does all you need, and not having it wouldn't have been enough.

So far, every album I've released has done better than the previous even though this was the first where I really tried to push quality to the max. It's also why the next part of this experiment will be to do the opposite and just go for minimal requirements. I have a very strong suspicion that the CD quality won't matter while band popularity will.

I'm also convinced that all I need to do to hit a diamond selling album (10 million copies) is to just spend a year touring the entire country so my band popularity is nearly maxxed everywhere rather than just the Northeast. Again, since this doesn't take anything more than getting the 'correct' answer once when it comes to designing your 6, 9, and 12 song lists, it's massively limiting in terms of strategy.

Now, I'm not saying song quality doesn't matter at all. It obviously does. But when I had an instant #1 CD without any 100 quality songs on it, and my all 100 quality CD only had a small increase in sales per week, I'm pretty sure that song quality is vastly underutilized. And again, when it comes to gigs, RNG is a must rather than player skill and strategy.

Some other interesting tidbits I noticed doing this lil' experiment.

- My top selling single CD was the 10th song. That song barely got played on tour since outside the Northeast, my gigs were 9-song gigs, and 1 of those songs was a previous released RNG winner. Since my band isn't named Coldplay, I don't understand why people are more willing to buy my song when they don't actually get to hear it.

(on the other hand, if I was Coldplay, it'd make perfect sense how my 'music' was more popular with people who haven't actually heard it)

- The maximum you can earn in a single gig is $1,110,000. You do this by keeping the 1 Repuation, $100 minimum per month manager who takes the smallest percentage of your gig pay. Then, you reach enough band popularity that he can book you as the headliner in a 60,000 seat stadium which pays $25 per ticket, and of course, you'll need to sell out the crowd.

- Other than headliner shows, t-shirts at $12 are vastly more important for your income than gig pay. CD pay always sucks, and honestly, outside of record contract's ability to boost your band's popularity, wouldn't be worth doing (which is a future experiment I have planned).

- Contrary to the tips the game tosses at you about giving away CD's and t-shirts, there is almost no noticeable difference in the number of t-shirts and CD's the audience takes between having them pay or take for free.

- The band's popularity at the time of a CD's release is WAY more important than anything else when it comes to CD sales. That bit about the 10th song is heavily influenced by this, although there is still some weirdness in that I was releasing singles in batches which means it wasn't released alone. But the later released singles all outperform those that were released first.

Here's that max income video example:

https://youtu.be/e8biNi8JDw8

[Gillissie]

Wow, that's a pretty detailed analysis. Far more than I ever did myself. This kind of work is pretty important in balancing games, but generally takes more time than a dev has, and still get coding done. :D I'd love to use this info for further balancing.

BTW, I'm not sure that your conclusions of "no strategy" is totally true. It's just that you figured out the ideal strategies by playing so much and honing in on them.

[Xavori]

Originally posted by Gillissie:

Wow, that's a pretty detailed analysis. Far more than I ever did myself. This kind of work is pretty important in balancing games, but generally takes more time than a dev has, and still get coding done. :D I'd love to use this info for further balancing.

BTW, I'm not sure that your conclusions of "no strategy" is totally true. It's just that you figured out the ideal strategies by playing so much and honing in on them.

Breaking games is kinda a thing of mine. Once upon a time, I used to write strategy guides for a living ;)

(Once upon a time, I also worked as a writer at a game dev, so I'm aware of the time/money issues :D )

Now that I've followed up the perfect CD with a junk CD, I have more info that is definitely more accurate than my initial conclusions from this bit. I was just about to write them up when I saw your post. You're not wrong about more strategy, but the working strategy is fairly inevitable for most players.

Also, it still bugs the hell out of me that RNG'd popular songs are a must-have for gigs, and more than that...well...let me go write up the next bit.

[AlterEgo45]

Originally posted by Xavori:

I then made singles of all 10 songs and made sure I had plenty of copies on hand for all my gigs while I waited for the release date. Then I went on tour to grind up as much popularity as possible for the songs (hence the need for singles...grinding pop without them is nearly impossible, and even with them is much, much slower than the actual full CD release).

How did you do this? Did you create and release the singles before signing a contract? And if you do that won't it affect the impact of those songs on the CD, since it would be a second release of the same thing?

Or did you wait until after the contract ends? At the end of the 50 gig requirement, you're already 3 months after your release. So does boosting the popularity of the spear carrier songs by maybe 3-5 extra points each really matter?

Also, do you also release singles of your hits too? Presumably they're already going to be at popularity 100 by the time you release.

I've currently got the #1 CD in my game by a large margin, plus 2 other CD's on the album chart which sell around 8k more units per week between them. So I sell around 170k total. I checked my profit on all this at the end of the week, since I'm assuming you get paid your cut every Sunday. I make $40k, which is pitiful compared to what you earn off gigs. I was surprised it is that low, but as I understand it bands IRL make their real money off gigs so if it is realistic then I'm fine with that. CD's are about the plaques and awards for me.

[Xavori]

Originally posted by AlterEgo45:

Originally posted by Xavori:

I then made singles of all 10 songs and made sure I had plenty of copies on hand for all my gigs while I waited for the release date. Then I went on tour to grind up as much popularity as possible for the songs (hence the need for singles...grinding pop without them is nearly impossible, and even with them is much, much slower than the actual full CD release).

How did you do this? Did you create and release the singles before signing a contract? And if you do that won't it affect the impact of those songs on the CD, since it would be a second release of the same thing?

Or did you wait until after the contract ends? At the end of the 50 gig requirement, you're already 3 months after your release. So does boosting the popularity of the spear carrier songs by maybe 3-5 extra points each really matter?

Also, do you also release singles of your hits too? Presumably they're already going to be at popularity 100 by the time you release.

I've currently got the #1 CD in my game by a large margin, plus 2 other CD's on the album chart which sell around 8k more units per week between them. So I sell around 170k total. I checked my profit on all this at the end of the week, since I'm assuming you get paid your cut every Sunday. I make $40k, which is pitiful compared to what you earn off gigs. I was surprised it is that low, but as I understand it bands IRL make their real money off gigs so if it is realistic then I'm fine with that. CD's are about the plaques and awards for me.

Lessee...going through your questions in order :D

1. I created all 10 singles before I signed the contract for the album. Given that it sold over 200k copies on day one, I don't think it mattered at all that all the songs were singles previously.

2. Ya. I don't think boosting the popularity of the songs themselves mattered at all. Also, there were no spear carrier songs. They were all 100 quality songs, and none of them were RNG pop.

3. I have released singles of the two RNG pop songs this band has. Those singles are still nowhere near what the single of Tenth Century ended up selling which is why I believe that band popularity AT RELEASE, song quality, and a bit of randomness ultimately determine CD sales. And none of them were really worth doing given that 20k copies at $5 each is only 100k, and I can get over $1 million for a single gig in just pay even before adding in t-shirts.

4. The perfect 100 CD sold over 6 million copies before dropping out of the #1 spot after 27 weeks. It only held on that 27th week because of the weekday timing since it's only getting boosted for 26 weeks on the 500k contract. After that, it cratered in sales just like my previous instant #1 release that ran 26 weeks at #1 before cratering in sales. And again, neither of them earned me enough money themselves to make it worth doing, but the bonus band popularity definitely got me bigger gigs faster.

5. Well, real bands in our position would get 10% since we're both performer and writer instead of the ~6% the game gives us. I'll test eventually if having a 100 Business skilled band mate helps at all with those contracts. I've already tested managers, and no joy.

[Xavori]

Just to give y'all more data to see if you come up with any ideas.

All my CD's have the same October 30 release date. I did this very intentionally to make timing comparisons easy. Current game date is Nov 27, 2011.

1. 10k contract. Chart high 1898 on Nov 26, 2006. Sales to date: 34,500. Profit: $197,746
2. 130k contract. Chart high 295 on Feb 24, 2008. Sales to date: 1,597, 261. Profit: $1,352,311
3. 500k contract. Chart high #1 on Dec 21, 2008. Sales to date: 5,092,079. Profit: $3,476,223
4. 500k contract. Chart high #1 on Nov 1, 2009 (release). Sales to date: 5,707, 321. Profit: $2,479,273
5. 500k contract. Chart high #1 on Oct 31, 2010 (release). Sales to date: 6,372,497 Profit: $5,034,047
6. 500k contract. Chart high #1 on Nov 6, 2011 (release). Sales to date 531,633 Profit: $357,669

In case you're wondering about #3 and #4 profit, a whole lot more of #3's sale is from gigs (a full extra year's worth) which earns $8 a pop in profit versus the measly ~6% from record label sales.

And just to highlight how measly CD's really are, my band's money stats:
Total Earned: $131,537,230
Gigs: $72,702971
T-shirts: $25,270,027
CD's: $14,363,315

So ya. It's all about selling out those headlined 60k stadiums

[AlterEgo45]

Originally posted by Xavori:

- My top selling single CD was the 10th song. That song barely got played on tour since outside the Northeast, my gigs were 9-song gigs, and 1 of those songs was a previous released RNG winner. Since my band isn't named Coldplay, I don't understand why people are more willing to buy my song when they don't actually get to hear it

Incidentally, I recently released singles of all the songs on my most recent CD. The last CD on the list, that is, the single which is listed last when displaying all of the gig sales, gets sales which are well beyond what I expect. It's a high rating song, not the highest rated out of the singles on offer, with a mediocre popularity rating and little effect on the crowd if I play it in a gig. It almost gets as many sales as the rest combined.

If this is the same thing that happens to you then their may be some coding which causes that last song to get more sales. I've also noticed that my albums sales within have dropped since I put singles for sale up there with it, but that might be that I'm in areas of the country where I am less popular.

[Xavori]

Originally posted by AlterEgo45:

Originally posted by Xavori:

- My top selling single CD was the 10th song. That song barely got played on tour since outside the Northeast, my gigs were 9-song gigs, and 1 of those songs was a previous released RNG winner. Since my band isn't named Coldplay, I don't understand why people are more willing to buy my song when they don't actually get to hear it

Incidentally, I recently released singles of all the songs on my most recent CD. The last CD on the list, that is, the single which is listed last when displaying all of the gig sales, gets sales which are well beyond what I expect. It's a high rating song, not the highest rated out of the singles on offer, with a mediocre popularity rating and little effect on the crowd if I play it in a gig. It almost gets as many sales as the rest combined.

If this is the same thing that happens to you then their may be some coding which causes that last song to get more sales. I've also noticed that my albums sales within have dropped since I put singles for sale up there with it, but that might be that I'm in areas of the country where I am less popular.

Interesting. I think you might be on the right track.

One thing to watch...what happens to that popular single when you release a newer single. I haven't tried that yet, but obviously I'm going to.

Tomorrow.

Cuz I iz sleepy now :D

[AlterEgo45]

Originally posted by Xavori:

Interesting. I think you might be on the right track.

One thing to watch...what happens to that popular single when you release a newer single. I haven't tried that yet, but obviously I'm going to.

Tomorrow.

Cuz I iz sleepy now :D

I just looked at my discography. I had released all my singles at the same time, about 12 of them. A couple were hits from previous CDs.

And the singles sales are in almost direct ascending order, with no relation to whether the song is a hit, or whether it is on the newest CD, or whether the rating is high.

I think what the game does at the end of a gig is say, "How many of these crowd members want a CD?". Then it takes them though your list in order from newest to oldest. If they buy the newest CD, that satisfies them and they no longer buy. If they don't buy the newest CD they move to the next newest one and so on.

So if you want to grow fame for a specific song, I believe you have to sell that single last in your list. Selling singles might also hurt album sales, as someone who might have bought an album is satisfied by a single, although I'm not 100% on that and this would probably also be true IRL too.

On another topic it just occurred to me that with that inevitable cratering that comes after 26 weeks, you've probably more or less hit the maximum of how many CD sales a single album can have.

So if you've got 6.7 million sales and your song then drops off into the 1,000 range on the charts, it must be damn near impossible to get a diamond record. Yet 1% of us have achieved it. Has anyone here gotten a diamond award on hard level?

[Xavori]

26 weeks is exactly half a year. I think it has everything to do with that, and nothing to do with anything else.

And I think gig sales of CD's might very well work like you suggest. However, that doesn't have much impact on chart sales as no way can you sell 6.7 million records in gigs :D

[Manouche]

A few minor observations.

The developper has always said hit songs were essentials, albums are built around them. They are central to the gameplay.

It's a management game and players are required to manage also the RNG.
You need to raise inspiration, write songs, test them in gigs and find your next gem that way. The more inspiration, songwriting, gigs, the faster you'll find it PROBABLY. This is in your control.
I don't think this is supposed to be a deep strategy game but a fun game and it has been a lot of fun for me. I will NEVER admit how many hours.

As for now, the only possible promotion for your album (outside the record company marketing budget) is playing it in concerts so for sure you will definitely sell more of them if you tour the entire country. This is a main game mechanic.

IRL nowadays, touring is where the big money is for famous artists, not album sales so the game is realistic in that regard and is centered around concerts and tours.

It makes sense fans want to buy the last released Cd first and then the next last etc... I guess it was not foreseen we would release a gazillion Cds in a short time.

I don't have a problem with a life duration for CDs. The problem is that if you make the perfect album each time then it will play out the same each time. And it's still too easy to do that.

[Xavori]

Originally posted by Manouche:

A few minor observations.

The developper has always said hit songs were essentials, albums are built around them. They are central to the gameplay.

It's a management game and players are required to manage also the RNG.
You need to raise inspiration, write songs, test them in gigs and find your next gem that way. The more inspiration, songwriting, gigs, the faster you'll find it PROBABLY. This is in your control.
I don't think this is supposed to be a deep strategy game but a fun game and it has been a lot of fun for me. I will NEVER admit how many hours.

As for now, the only possible promotion for your album (outside the record company marketing budget) is playing it in concerts so for sure you will definitely sell more of them if you tour the entire country. This is a main game mechanic.

IRL nowadays, touring is where the big money is for famous artists, not album sales so the game is realistic in that regard and is centered around concerts and tours.

It makes sense fans want to buy the last released Cd first and then the next last etc... I guess it was not foreseen we would release a gazillion Cds in a short time.

I don't have a problem with a life duration for CDs. The problem is that if you make the perfect album each time then it will play out the same each time. And it's still too easy to do that.

And as I pointed out with my two experiments, plus the one I just did based on AlterEgo's posts, none of that is accurate.

If you want a #1 album, you need exactly zero hit songs on it. What you need is band popularity and a 500k contract. That's it.

Building band popularity is much easier if you have a single hit song EVER. Like seriously. My now-boring-to-play-but-still-useful-for-experiments band has only ever had 2 songs hit RNG (ie. fans love the song, not the performance when they are played). However, those two songs carried single digit sets to 100 audience interest, and 100% audience interest builds popularity, and once you have popularity across the country, you can, like I did, release a CD with zero RNG songs on a 500k contract and have it sell 7 million copies (it'll almost certainly keep going if I keep playing the band).

So, what you do is get your 1 RNG song and just keep playing it at the end of every gig you ever do as you go on 3 month long tours. At the end of the tour, look at the band popularity in all cities and do another 3 month tour starting in the low popularity areas. Once you get a decent (just 50-ish) level everywhere, get your 10 songs, 5 at 90+ and 5 at 70+ (no RNG needed) and release the album. It'll be #1. If you immediately go on tour and stay on tour for 6 months, it'll never not be #1. No hit songs required at all.

@AlterEgo

So I took your idea to its silliest extreme. I went to the studio and created 5 exact duplicates of my perfect CD. The same 10 songs in the same order, but they now exist on 6 CD's with different names (1 record contract, 5 independent). And yup, the last one I released is vastly outselling the others.

So ya, I think you're right in how CD sales at gigs happen.

[Manouche]

What none of that is accurate ? I didn't argue against your conclusions.

Band popularity is the most important for Cds sales, not song quality, it has been said before. Go watch Gilligames vids on youtube if you haven't yet, there is a wealth of information about the game there.
It makes sense that if nobody knows you, even if you have great songs, you won't sell much.
If your band is popular, more fans come to the concerts, Cds sales are higher, that's what popularity means in the game.
This all has been discussed before, once the band is popular, once money is not a problem, the midgame, endgame, it's too easy and not challenging. The game will evolve to improve that part hopefully.

You are overcomplicating simple things like with hit songs. You don't have to play them at the end in non-battle gigs, the order doesn't matter as long as you don't mess up energy.

If you don't mind making another experiment. Make a Cd, anything. In one save, you tour and play the Cd songs. In another save, you don't tour at all. Let's see the difference in Cds sales. Don't sell Cds in your gigs, just the charts sales.

[AlterEgo45]

I think song popularity surely has some significant effect on album sales, too, though. Your band is probably so OP popular at this point that those things don't matter when it comes to hitting #1.

I recently had an album which debuted at #30 and took 4 weeks to make it to #1. I don't think even a solid month of touring would affect my national pop enough to have that kind of influence on sales, more that the songs on the CD which weren't 100 popularity became more popular with the CD sales, which then boosted the sales of the CD still further.

Hits aren't just important because they carry a set, but because they will be at 100 popularity when you release a CD with them on it. Non-hits which are decent, if you play them a lot at gigs during the previous year, might release with 25 popularity and be more prone to gaining popularity with CD sales than crap songs of all levels, the ones which get 2 stars with you play them at 60,000 seat stadiums.

My theory is that to maximize your CD sales, you want songs which are either 100 popularity upon release, combined with non-hit songs which will get as close as possible to 100 popularity during the 26 week 'push' window.

For the experiment you've been releasing songs with certain values and showing the effects of band popularity, which is huge. But I think if a band like yours released a CD with previously unreleased songs that are 100 pop or able to attain close to 100 pop during that window, you'd get 15 million sales. Song popularity has to have this effect, otherwise there is no use in having that attribute.

By the way, do you think there is NO penalty whatsoever for re-using a song? It still seems strange to me that I can release a song independently, then release that same song on an album 4 months later and it have 0 effect on album sales. Have you ever re-used a song from a previous album?

[AlterEgo45]

Originally posted by Manouche:

If you don't mind making another experiment. Make a Cd, anything. In one save, you tour and play the Cd songs. In another save, you don't tour at all. Let's see the difference in Cds sales. Don't sell Cds in your gigs, just the charts sales.

My bet is that it will make little to no difference, since his band pop is already so high, non-hits won't gain that much popularity in a month of touring, and gig sales are next to nothing in the big picture.

[Manouche]

I didn't realise his band's pop was that high. You're probably right it won't make much difference.
I think it's best to collect data with regular parameters rather than extreme ones. Still interesting but nuances are less apparent.