I'm Arielle Soulat. I'm going to write this guide as I play along, just to try to help newbies to get their life going. First of all remember: “There is no wrong in Popmundo” – meaning that the things I say below are just some advices I gathered by listening to other people and reading the question forum.
You have a character but you have no money. Also you have no clue what you are doing what so ever. Well take a deep breath and take your time. Don't go crazy.
In the beginning you have the mother tour to do. Take your time. Especially flying with a airplane and staying in a hotel are expensive, so wait until you have some cash before leaving town. What should you do first?
In the Newbie Question Forum there is a topic called 'Newbie Support Organization'.Here you can get two books for free. I advise you to learn skils, listed below:
So after less than a week, you will have at least 4 skills. So now it might be time to start skilling up. My advice is to get to 5* in all the above skills in that order.
As a normal player you receive 1 to 3 experience points every week on Sunday. But for the first 21-26 days, you receive 2 experience points every update. You can divide them on the following skills:
Of course, you are free to do what you want, but to help your musical career I advise you to put you first experience in either IQ or Musicality. With perfect IQ, you only need 23 updates to get to 5 stars in a skill. With perfect musicality, you can write great songs, but you need Composing and Lyrics skills as well….
Your intelligence helps you study, learn new things, and cope with the unknown.
Charm helps your performance on stage. And helps a lot talking to the media. But the other factors are so bad that your charm increase will not do much. Don't waste too much points here at the moment.
Your looks (or lack thereof) determine how well you are received by fans, critics, and lovers. Sad but true in the real world. Equally sad and true in here.
Your vocal attribute determines just how good of a singer you are. Not advised to spend Exp. Points here at the start.
Read more about Experience points
When you just start out you have no job relevant skills. So you should look for a high paying job in one the following professions.
Start looking in It's POP!.
If you look good you will almost always find a job worth €800-€1000 a week, depending on the city. If not, you should take a job at a locale with an active CEO. You can ask him for a wage raise. Most CEO's do that for newbies.
Once you have a job, you don’t have to do anything, you go on with your business and the on Friday you get payed. Keep in mind that if you leave town you might get fired. But if that happens, just get a new job in your new city.
List with all Jobs
I strongly advise you to not Busk for cash. The health/mood drops will be terrible and the money you make will be no more than some change. It’s not worth it.
To compose a song first look at this little guide to get a impression.
Okay, you don’t have good musical talents, you can’t compose, you don’t have lyrical abilities you don’t know any advanced composing styles. But your mom insist you write a song anyway.
Just do it. Sit in your room and compose a song. Be sure you change your priority to compose music. After a couple of updates you will see that the melody has a gold bar. Now just switch to composing lyrics by clicking on the empty bar. Another couple of updates and you can finish your song. Congratulations: You now have a song which has a dreadful melody and truly abysmal lyrics. Or something like that.
Well, just forget that song. You will need something better before you first concert. As a newbie you should look for covers to play. You need at least 8 songs for a concert and ideally you need 13. More than 15 will get your audience bored. So, start looking for 8 covers to add to your repertoire. To add a song it must be on a single or an album . Therefore, always try to find songs that are on the charts and rising. Second thing that is wise to look for in a cover, is a song that has the same dominant instruments that you use in your act/band. Genre doesn't make a big difference as you can change it to your own in the repertoire page. Anyway, you probably don't have 5* in any genre skills.
You have 8 or more songs? Time to start jamming.
To improve quality of your shows and records, you should jam (practice)songs in your band's repertoire. As a newbie, you should look for an affordable jam place that has got as high quality as possible. This speeds up jam percentage and keeps you in a higher mood.
You can only jam to 100% if you and all of your band members have at least 4* in genre skill. Songs won't be at 100% for long this way, so I advise you to improve your genre skill to 5*. That way, your 100% will stay for about 10 days.
Okay, you worked hard. You have chosen at least 8 popular songs. You jammed a couple of times and they are at 50+%. You skilled your genre skill up to 5* and you are working on your first role skills. Your mom is starting to get on your nerves… You are ready for some action! Before you arrange a show , keep in mind that ticket sales need time. That means that you will sell maximum tickets if you book a gig at least 56 days ahead (One Popmundo year).
To get a show, you can do 3 things:
But often, you will notice this club requires a minimum fame and you probably don’t have that.
Smartest thing is to contact the owner he will send you an invitation. You will notice he changes the ticket price to € 5/6. this is to maximize sales for your current fame.
Here you can put an ad that you are looking for an invite. You will get invitations from a club owner for your genre soon.
Hooray! You have your first show! Now you have to decide what you are going to do on that stage when the time is there.
Looking at your repertoire you should keep in mind that you should take at least 8 and maximum of 15 songs for a show. Where 13 is the ideal number. Because the end of show rating will depend on the average score of all your song it might be wise to use 8 good songs instead of 8 good songs and 5 terrible songs. Because Popmundo guests have a short memory it is important to have your best songs at the end. Being the best depend on quite some factors, like:
I mostly look like this.
After a show you will get a report and see ratings for your songs. Be smart and change things for next time if you see that some ratings are higher early, instead of late in the show.
As a newbie, you won’t have much stage skills to use in the beginning. Search for generic and genre stage events that don’t need anything. Once again use your best events in the end. Best way to do it is something like this:
…
One day you will see the remark that “The audience is chanting for more”. This is the time to start using an encore.
Reminder: Feel free to try different things and learn. You’ll survive if something doesn’t work out in a show. It's not as if your world fame depends on it (yet).
For those who can’t wait to get more stars in stage events, try learning Basic Showmanship and Basic Sex Appeal.
So, you survived you first show. You might want to plan another couple of shows in your home town just to see what works and what doesn’t.
But if you are like me, you want to stretch your horizons, meet new people and see new places. So let’s start touring. Even though the pro’s don’t recommended it.
Why isn’t it recommended? Because it will hit your health and mood.
I will tell you about what I did, and what I think works and does not work. Because I had no money for a tour bus I travel by plane or I hitchhike. To hitchhike go to a travel route and set your priority. You will catch a ride with any bus that’s going your way. This is a free and very ‘healthy’ way of travel.
Flying gives you more control about what time you arrive and depart. So if you have a tight time schedule take a plane. The problem with flying is that you get hit about one health point a hour if you fly 2nd class economy which you probably are. health/mood
My first tour I did within Europe and I had scheduled a show every 5 days. Flying hit my health but because i had 5 days to recover in between flights it didn’t really make me worry. After I left the band I was in they went on a big tour hitting shows every day. Within days one of the members were hospitalized because bad health. He got frustrated and ended leaving the game all together. So my warning is…don’t fly if you can’t rest afterwards. After a while my new band also wanted to do more shows in a quicker time schedule. We to too a plane trough the whole us. This ended with my band member left behind in a hospital in NY while I had to finish two more shows alone.
Because are next tour was set on a travel route we could hitchhike most of it. So, keep the travel routes in mind while booking shows in your tour. And don’t leave town without good health.
Now I bought a ‘second hand minivan’ as a tour bus, it broke down on its first trip and we barely made our show. I’ll keep you posted, but if it goes on like this it certainly makes life exciting!
The easiest way to get on your way with touring is by opening a thread on “The Company Forum”. It should look like this:
[your genre][your artist ranking] Looking for invites E.G: [Hip Hop][#233] Looking for invites
List the dates and places you want to go and maybe help with what ticket price or rider you expect. You will soon get some invites. Pick the places you want to go to and remember to look at travel routs before you start planning.
Most clubs have open bookings, but they also require city fame. So often you can’t book unless you email with the owner/CEO
Club CEO’s often really like to help you out because they need bands to play in there club to make profit. Take advantage of that and let them help you .
Here some owners have adverts for open spots in their schedule.
Your fame in a city will strongly influence your revenue coming from shows. (ticket price x number of tickets). Your fame is calculated by your average show performance in the last 56 days. (one popmundo year) and media attention. Which will raise naturally with better performances and can be pushed by talking to the media. Some people say it’s good to only play once every 56 days, but as a new bad you can really profit from the media attention and play in a town let’s say every 20 days. Because you will sell more tickets for a higher price that you would in a new town, you will make more profit.
Oh, one last thing, book your tour ahead, you won’t sell any tickets if you don’t give people time to buy them.
Okay you booked some shows and are ready to tour, but hey…. You have to wait another 50 days before the first show. Well, you might as well learn some skills.
You can always go to a shop and buy a book about the skill you want to learn. After you read the book ( use book in you items list) you will notice the skill can be found in your Skills list. To learn your skill you will have to select it and set you priority to skilling. This method will only skill up until 5*
In the past there were no classes so this was a cheap way to learn skils. I expect that in the future ‘learning from masters’ will focus on rare skills. But because it’s free it might be good for you too.
A master can learn you a skill by teaching. You have to be in same location as your master and your priority has to be ‘learn from master’. Depending on your intelligence and the masters learning skills it will take something like 9-12 updates to master that skill. You’ll get a diary message. You will find the skill in your skills page as if you read the book. Now your skilling you will have to do yourself by priority: “improve skill” up to max 5*
This started summer 2009 You can go to an university to enroll in a class for a certain skill. If you go to your home town university it will cost less than when you go to another town. The prices strongly defer between types of skills. Once you have enrolled to a class you can set your priority to attend class. To get maximum result you have to stay at the university during every update. If you are not there during a update you will get less result. If you are busy doing something else (like jamming or playing a show) you will skip class and get no result out of your class. The good thing about skilling this way is that you can learn the skill from scratch without reading the book or learning from master and after that you can also skill up. If you are very patient you can skill up past 5* up to the skill level of your professor. E.g. you professor has 8* in that skill you can also skill up to 8* Also I have noticed that skilling this way will not hit as much of your health/mood as skilling the classic way
Get at least dreadful fame in at least one city
Okay, you or one of your band mates has written a song you think in worth releasing on a single.
The higher the production level is, the better the review on the record and the more copies you sell.
So what you do is go to a Recording studio and book time. Right then you also choose what song you will record. You can’t book more than one recording at a time. (which annoys me terrible)
After you planed your recording you can look at it by clicking the red T in your repertoire page. On the recording page you can also invite guest artists ( I have no experience in that) and you can invite the record producer. The better the producer the better your recording will be.
To find a 5* producer I always look on the local city forum.
After sitting in the studio all day you will receive a message telling you how good your recording has turned out. Until you release a track on record you can also decide to re-record it.
I have a contract with a friend of mine so that might not be fair, but all record studios can give you a contract. Things to focus on when signing a contract:
But you can always rip your contract so don’t get to stressed about it all.
A single consists of two tracks. The locomotive song (a-side) of the single is preferably of recent date, with growing fame and popularity.
An album has 8 - 12 tracks. Every song above 8 gives you a (slight) bonus on your review. Singles and albums are reviewed within 24 hours after releasing them. Better reviews affect the record sales positively.
You have to have at least dreadful fame in one city and preferably fame in more cities to sell any copies of your record. Don't rush when you want to release records, it needs fame and good songs / recordings to sell records.
Once your single or album is finished, submit it as soon as possible to the studio, so the Owner / CEO can order the discs from a Factory. The supply of the discs has to be delivered before Wednesday, when the record sales are calculated. It would be nice to send the Owner / CEO of the Record Studio a message that you've submitted a record, so actions can be taken. Also mention the desired release date.
In general records will be released on Tuesday, but since the new record sales system with pre-ordering is up and running other weekdays might be possible too. Releasing records too soon hurts the record sales badly, you'd better wait a couple of days. New Singles can be released every 30 days and albums every 112 days (2 popoyears), you'll get the “your fans are eagerly waiting” message then.
The week before Christmas the record sales will be boosted, try to plan your releases accordingly. The week after Christmas shows crappy sales, try to avoid releases in that period.
Just to give you an example: my first single sold in 25 cities where it sold a total of 19000 cd’s in 10 weeks, worth a total of € 66 000 (which the band got 70% of)
Of course we bought a tour bus after that.