Getting Started and Going Triple Platinum

1. Songwriting is the most important stat. Stage presence is next. Playing just speeds up learning songs via practice so you can kinda put that off. Repair you can train by doing. Business and production would matter if you weren't going to be swimming in cash before your second year. My band is 4 songwriters and 1 Stage Presence. They have all green connections between them, and the song presence member has no ego.

2. Travelling city to city at the start looking for band members is a great idea. Green connections are a must. No ego on non songwriters is a must. Low ego on everyone is great, but not necessary.

3. Your first album can suck. It's not going to be good, so don't bother trying. It just needs to help you increase popularity for your band. My first album was 20 percent recording quality. Oddly enough, it still sells a hundred or so copies a week.

4. You absolutely want to visit the 500-700 seat bars in your hometown every weekend starting out. They have the red brick outsides. Many of them in large cities don't book anyone at the start of the game, but there are a few that do, and those will be the ones you want to build up your reputation in.

5. If you live somewhere with theaters and stadiums, watch during the week for shows to attend (but not weekends...that's for building rep with the bars that will let you play eventually). This gives you cheap inspiration which will help you write better songs.

6. Keep your initial tours short. You need to build up a popularity base regionally. For the first year, I'd recommend nothing but 2 week tours. You can also have your manager looking for local gigs within 250 miles, but the tour thing is more reliable at getting you a bunch of gigs.

7. The first songs of every gig are always your most popular songs FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER! I cannot stress this enough. When you finally get a song that the audience likes and it climbs quickly to 100 popularity, that's your opening number for the next year or more. Eventually, you'll get more than one of those, and you'll start seeing your other songs climb much more slowly. But having 2-3 100 popularity songs (not quality) spikes the initial audience interest and makes the rest of your gig better in their eyes.

8. Along those lines, popularity of a song is more important than quality. Sadly, this is just like real life.

9. Also like real life is that the game gets tons easier as you get rich. You can solve a lot of artist shortcomings by having equipment that boosts stage presence, songwriting, etc.

10. As soon as you finish a contract, create singles of the popular songs on that album. It's extra cash even at $4 a pop for the singles.

11. Contrary to the game hints, there is little to no point in giving away t-shirts or CD's. It makes very little difference to how many you'll get out there. You need the cash more.

12. Since you have to wait a year anyway, after that first album is a great time for a 3-4 month long tour. This will get you a bit of popularity outside that starting region you've built up.

13. Your second contract needs to be a 70% contract. This will also likely stick you with a specific produce, but that's fine. You need the RC's promotional money more than worrying about having to travel to record the CD since that money they invisibly spend on promoting the CD is critical to the CD's actual success once it's release.

14. By this point, you should be able to get +8-+10 in stage presence and songwriting gear for all your band members. It's kinda annoying driving shop to shop to find it all, but it's pretty potent.

15. That mandatory year between contracts is a great time to go set up in a new region or go on 2-3 month long tours that will start growing your popularity outside your initial cash cow starting area. When you get to your third album and the label is dumping $350k in promo and you are double digit popularity everywhere, well, sales are easy.

Rising Star 2 Getting Started

1. Songwriting is the most important stat. Stage presence is next. Playing just speeds up learning songs via practice so you can kinda put that off. Repair you can train by doing. Business and production would matter if you weren't going to be swimming in cash before your second year. My band is 4 songwriters and 1 Stage Presence. They have all green connections between them, and the song presence member has no ego.

2. Travelling city to city at the start looking for band members is a great idea. Green connections are a must. No ego on non songwriters is a must. Low ego on everyone is great, but not necessary.

3. Your first album can suck. It's not going to be good, so don't bother trying. It just needs to help you increase popularity for your band. My first album was 20 percent recording quality. Oddly enough, it still sells a hundred or so copies a week.

4. You absolutely want to visit the 500-700 seat bars in your hometown every weekend starting out. They have the red brick outsides. Many of them in large cities don't book anyone at the start of the game, but there are a few that do, and those will be the ones you want to build up your reputation in.

5. If you live somewhere with theaters and stadiums, watch during the week for shows to attend (but not weekends...that's for building rep with the bars that will let you play eventually). This gives you cheap inspiration which will help you write better songs.

6. Keep your initial tours short. You need to build up a popularity base regionally. For the first year, I'd recommend nothing but 2 week tours. You can also have your manager looking for local gigs within 250 miles, but the tour thing is more reliable at getting you a bunch of gigs.

7. The first songs of every gig are always your most popular songs FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER! I cannot stress this enough. When you finally get a song that the audience likes and it climbs quickly to 100 popularity, that's your opening number for the next year or more. Eventually, you'll get more than one of those, and you'll start seeing your other songs climb much more slowly. But having 2-3 100 popularity songs (not quality) spikes the initial audience interest and makes the rest of your gig better in their eyes.

8. Along those lines, popularity of a song is more important than quality. Sadly, this is just like real life.

9. Also like real life is that the game gets tons easier as you get rich. You can solve a lot of artist shortcomings by having equipment that boosts stage presence, songwriting, etc.

10. As soon as you finish a contract, create singles of the popular songs on that album. It's extra cash even at $4 a pop for the singles.

11. Contrary to the game hints, there is little to no point in giving away t-shirts or CD's. It makes very little difference to how many you'll get out there. You need the cash more.

12. Since you have to wait a year anyway, after that first album is a great time for a 3-4 month long tour. This will get you a bit of popularity outside that starting region you've built up.

13. Your second contract needs to be a 70% contract. This will also likely stick you with a specific produce, but that's fine. You need the RC's promotional money more than worrying about having to travel to record the CD since that money they invisibly spend on promoting the CD is critical to the CD's actual success once it's release.

14. By this point, you should be able to get +8-+10 in stage presence and songwriting gear for all your band members. It's kinda annoying driving shop to shop to find it all, but it's pretty potent.

15. That mandatory year between contracts is a great time to go set up in a new region or go on 2-3 month long tours that will start growing your popularity outside your initial cash cow starting area. When you get to your third album and the label is dumping $350k in promo and you are double digit popularity everywhere, well, sales are easy.

[tjshultz1989]

The easiest trick you can do in the game starting out is writing 9 songs and playing bar shows until you get at least 1 popularity point. Most cities I've started in have at least 1 manager with a 2 rating. Once you get a manager you're made. Book a tour but take a note at who the headliner for the show is and what their popularity is. Change the starting city until you find a headliner with at least 70 popularity. Doing that will get you on a tour playing in arenas and stadiums that will make you upwards of $50k a show pretty easily. Once you've amassed a lot of money wait until you get a 3x multiplier day and go to the art gallery. Buying art is the easiest way to gain XP, especially at 3x. Then use that to upgrade your band members' skills. You can download user submitted art through the game in the settings menu that'll give you way higher XP gains than the game's default artworks

[Xavori]

Just FYI, this guide is horribly out of date as the game has undergone a lot of changes and improvements since I put it together. I'd update it, but I'm not really sure any kind of guide is really needed anymore as the game has reached a point where it's pretty much impossible to lose. Instead, the difference between playing badly and playing well is how fast you ultimately succeed, and you only fail if you flat out work towards failure.

[Arturo I]

You can start with a full band who will all get along - that's a plus! - and if you go busking every day (cut the grass when you need to) the whole band (except if you have keys, they can't busk) builds up playing skills pretty quickly so your song writing quality improves a little faster. Writing a bad song and then immediately dumping it will get you some XP, too, so you can continue to improve song quality (combining ideas helps a ton for getting a higher quality song...don't forget to do this!). I don't start practicing songs until I can write a song that has a 20+ quality rating. The reason for this is because you will only get small gigs at first and short sets of six bad songs will not help your band popularity rating improve much... And you won't sell much merchandise, either.

[Raku-kun]

i'ma try this tips thanks bro

[mravac_kid]

With the new changes to songwriting and added song difficulty, playing skill suddenly got a *lot* more important, as your guys need the skill to learn the more difficult songs. Not a problem at the start, but once you get going and a musician quits, it can be an issue getting a replacement able to play at the required skill level.

[fatfish89]

I don't find that it matters too much where your most popular song is, I actually get a significant affect from it at the end as well

[Bohemian Rap City]

Two tips I would add.

1) Start off with a throwaway band member who has high repair so that he can train your band members up in the skill. Dump him and replace him before you start cranking out hits.

2) on triple EXP days you can get more free experience by busking early, then repair, then travel to a nearby town and back, then practice on a large group of ARCHIVED songs (the more the song requires to raise it, the more exp you get up to your playing skill limit. If you train songs that don't stretch the limit of playing skill you get less exp.