RealProducer

Mixtape might be outdated, now days people release music on soundcloud, Spotify, YouTube, etc. they are usually called EP’s nowadays. It’s easy to do your own distribution with apps like distrokid and tunecore. To add to suggestions, social media should play a bigger role in blowing up a artist.

Nice!

Thanks, I’m really loving the game and it’s potential!

Road 2 Success Ideas Parent companies (The Kings). Vanity Labels/Subsidiaries/Child Companies/Affiliates(perks for signing artist, sort of like developmental). Vanity Labels = a perk given in a contract for creative control to develop and profit from there own artist using funds from label (not a real label more of an imprint that a artist will have that will list young artist under his wing and act like a mentor) these artist will be active releasing music and seeking distribution deals. This would act as a developmental for your label as you can potentially signed them away or graduate from your artist. Parent company pay taxes, set your budget for the year (usually more money than you would have as an Indy company but based on profits of previous years) can fire you as ceo (please add ability to get new job as ceo) no charge for using parent’s studio, manufacturing or distribution facilities. Parent label can drop child label to cut cost (label now becomes independent unless it can get a label deal with another bigger company or stay independent and get bank loans). Some sort of CEO rep or rating for job security. A high rating enables you to ask a bank for loan or look for investors to buy your current label from up under the current parent company. Rating also determined if hired as ceo elsewhere or if you’re currently the head of an independent company and your rating is high enough, labels will offer you a label deal/affiliation which will give your label access to their funding (they will set your budget) free access to all of their facilities if they have them, including distribution. Pretty much the same functions a parent company will give you including the company making money off of you. The differences from having a parent will be that you can not get fired and you will have to pay your own taxes. This would eventually lead to an offer to merge your company making you the new CEO of their company If rating is high enough. These offers are only offered from companies that are bigger than you currently are. Another difference is that affiliates do not own your catalog like a parent company does. Label deals also can expire if not renewed. Parent companies and label deals could be an alternative to seeking outside investors and bank loans. The user should be able to offer label deals to fund other labels and profit from them (lesser labels) and when buying companies we should have the option to merge or keep the company as a child company that we can fund and profit from. Parent & Affiliated companies shall set your budget and the budget increases/decreases yearly depending on profit success. Alternative idea from parent/affiliate automatically setting the budget is the ability to ask for funding like a bank except there is bigger money you have access. You will have to recoup/pay back the parent with royalties % added before making your own profit to make money to expand and etc. Child label will have access to more money than affiliate labels/distribution deals. The ability to start your own Indy label at any time even when fired from a company. The ability to be hired as CEO for another label. True independent record labels. Artist finder’s/discovery fee. Artist discovering talent. Musicians signed to artists. Distribution Deals (bigger company distributes lower company). Important relationships (network = Networth) (artist build relationships from tours or at events). Artist reputation (the more popular, the more people want to work with the artists). Payola (illegally pay money for promo; very expensive and decreases label rep a lot, fast track to stardom). CEO hiring and firing. Independent artist activity (unsigned artist being active in game world) singles, albums, tours, events. Bands forming. Revamp Artist name database (a person from China with a English name?). Buy and merge facilities. Rapper & DJ Band type. 5 Rapper Band Type. Tour Promotion from companies like Live Nation. Artist discography and chart history That can be edited in the editor (could help with veteran artist winning best new artist awards when first starting save). Edit friendships and favorite people in editor. More accurate digital distribution companies (Tunecore etc). Scouts renamed to A&R. Retired musicians can become Head A&R’s/Scouts. Show/event/awards history editable in editor (ex. Most performances, most awards). More topics on Wendy Williams other than dating (maybe fueds and rumors that aren’t true) add a little more variety. Managers in editor. Name file in editor. (Names really do not match the language or country of people). In-game editor that would enable us to change names of people. Some way to determine the number of people are generated from each country. Genre specific distributors. Distribution that covers specific countries. A way to lower cost if you are a low budget independent. Relationship building & dating frequency slider. Multiple producers on track. Album Debut Chart. Multiple features on records. Studio ratings increasing and decreasing based on success of records. Same as above for writers/producers/mixers. Imprints/Divisions/Brands that we can create (and make in editor) to sort and separate artists especially if roster is big. Pictures images for labels. Multiple preferred genres (up to 3). Opening acts for touring. Label specific and based on relationships. Touring should also be a good way to build relationships between artist that may lead to working together. Musicians with similar genre should have a better chance at building a relationships. Producers, writers could refuse to work with someone if their rep is too low. Relationships give you a better chance at working with someone that are more successful that the artist in question. Unsigned AI artist should be just as active as signed artist. They should also be seeking distribution deals with bigger labels especially unsigned vets who do not really need label backing. Artist in bands can take break from band and go solo. Can approach artist in band for a solo deal and project. Band members can sign solo deals at other labels. Can sign a in house production team of mixers, producers, vocal coach and songwriters who can also generate income for you (easier to sign young up and comers to these deals) they should be cheaper to pay as they are already on contract. Unsigned/Indy artist sign distribution and label deals. A back button to go back to last screen. Possibility to produce a song without lyrics (0 lyrical rating) for a basic EDM track. Successful singles build hype for album. Multiple singles at once can reduce sales of singles slightly. Should dance be renamed to performance? To also cover genres that doesn’t really need dance moves but still factor on being entertaining and doing a performance like DJ sets for example? Pretty much how entertaining the artist is? Genres have different criteria for success. for example teen pop may not need strong lyrical rating but instead benefit more from melody and commercial and production* Rap will have a high importance on lyrical rating & production* but not so much with melody & commercial while the opposite will be true for hip hop as lyrical rating will take a back seat to production, melody and commercial. Teen pop should also have a age limit criteria. This should also be true for edm as lyrical rating should take a huge back seat to production, melody & commercial especially for Dance (melody shouldn’t be that important for dnb or techno). Genres should have criteria for artist roles. Guitarist can’t produce dance music for example. Maybe add a new option when making new songs: add new rating called production- Production Lyric Melody Commercial With the addition of production, we now will receive 2 ratings after the song writing process is over (Lyric rating & Production Rating). During songwriting we will do everything normally like set how many days and the environment. But now we have the option to select not only songwriters but producers as well. You must pick one or choose both. If deciding to not write with a songwriter and only select a producer, a N/A rating will show for lyric rating as your team did not write any lyrics (will get a lyric rating later if decided to write songs and vice versa if only select a writer and no producers) this way the game can be even more realistic in the song writing process especially for genres like techno that rarely have any lyrics. Irl, the songwriting stage will involve producers and writers then reference tracks are made. We should be able to select a full team of writers, producers, vocal producers and mixers during the writing stage as they can all potentially help with a song in its raw form. Once writing is done (the bigger the team the more songs you can potentially create. A team of 10 will create more songs more than likely in a week than a one man team would in 29 days. Bigger teams should increase the odds of more songs. These songs should be able to get sold. Once songwriting is over, you will get either 1 of the 2 ratings or both depending on the task of the sessions. Production rating (the quality of the production which shall be one of the most important ratings in the game and is needed for most genres) and Lyric rating (important in genres that feature vocals. Not as in important with teen pop and hip hop but very important in R&B and rap. Once songs are in database, you can produce singles, albums/EP as before. In this stage, is where you shall get the remaining 2 ratings (melody & commercial) but lyric and production can also improve at this stage. You can select more writers at this stage to try and improve the lyric rating or hire a writer to turn a instrumental into a song with lyrics or keep the same staff at no extra charge (lyric rating becomes a number instead of N/A) you can also hire producers here to try to improve the production rating or create a production rating if you didn’t produce during writing. Can also keep the original team for no extra charge. Vocal producers and mixers can also be selected here to help improve ratings. Then of course the studio. You can keep the original team together at no extra cost but this stage will generate the other ratings with potential to improve the lyric and production ratings. In real life, song writing and recording are two different phases. One is creating something raw and the other is polishing. Also make the process more realistic for other genres of music who can skip the lyric writing stage (only select a producers and not selecting a writer). When creating a new song we can select whether we want to produce or write. Produce will reveal the quality of the production while writing will reveal the quality of the lyrics. If produced, will now have song ideas in the database like we would if we wrote. These songs can also be sold. When producing a song for release, we should have options to added writers or even more producers to the song to try and improve ratings along with mixer and vocal producer if needed. Once song is done all other ratings are revealed, in this case the Lyric, Melody and Commercial ratings. This is a good option for DJ’s or other none vocalist to put out music. We should be able to sell our production as well. Ability to only release digital releases to save money. Ability to create collaboration albums (AI can do same if have relationships). Ability to create bands with unsigned artist (only work if they all have relationships). Along side tv shows and radio shows we should have the ability to send and get offers from internet shows, podcasts and blog/magazine interviews. More filters categories on screens. In editor there should be an ability to make a host permanent to a show (contract will always get renewed) because it will be weird having some random guy be the host of the Tyra Banks Show lol. Preferred genre for vocal producers. Preferred genres for studios (some studio equipment are tailor to a certain sound or genre: for example many hip hop artist and mixers record with a SSL console because of the fatness It gives drums). Preferred tempo for artist. More genres like jazz & gospel. Ability to create song names, album names in editor with the ability to tie them to a specific genre and gender. Ability to edit what countries talent come from in the editor for generated musicians. For example set number of hip hop artist coming from USA or how many DJ’s are coming from Europe. Having relationship with people should reduce cost to hire them for work. Non vocal music shouldn’t need songwriters, lyric rating or vocal producers. Ability to collaborate with bands. Dj will try to seek features on they records often. Ability to not only buy songs that are written but the ability to buy songs that are already produced. We should be able to sell written and produce songs. Record label get a cut if created by our production team. When artist prefer a certain person to work with, give the user the ability to only select them or no one else. Don’t automatically select someone. Relationships should drive the game like it does in the industry. Artist will lower fees for buddies and jack up prices for someone they do not know especially if low rep. The ability to send artist to places and events to network and potentially create relationships. The ability to throw a party/mixers to put your artists in a good position to build relationships. Touring should help build relationships with opening acts. Artist opening acts should try to be in same genre for AI. Hiring extra staff like writers and producers at the production stage should not guarantee a rating bump to Lyric & production (ratings acquired during songwriting phase) but will increase the chances depending on quality. Similar to state of dance or radio playlist, there should be a genre specific playlist for streaming services. Should help song if song makes the streaming playlist similar to radio. Artist if have enough money can decide to start developing their own artist (their Indy label) and can cut distribution deals with you or any other company in game. You can also offer funding to their label as a perk when signing them to your label. Money for developing their artist will come out of your company pockets instead of their own. Set award criteria in editor. Some awards my be heavily based on popularity while others can be set to take quality and records sold into consideration. More award slots. Ability to pre populate relationships and favorites for artist in the editor. Number of people attached to a song increases the chance of songs being made and the quantity of them during writing sessions. 1 great writer can possibly give you 0 songs in 20 days while a team could give you 10+ songs. Quality based on ratings of course. Ability to edit artist, writers, mixer, band and etc names at any time. The ability to Record on the road which should be cheaper and faster but lacks quality and hurts touring performances. Social media. Multiple dates, cities tour for radio stations.

How important is it for EDM or any genre that doesn’t really feature lyrics and vocals like Techno? Asking because I have a artist that’s a DJ for Techno and in order to release anything, I have to go into songwriting sessions that will reveal a lyric rating before I can produce the track. I notice vocal producer and mixer can be skipped but I must select a writer for lyrics.

I definitely would like this. I have a long list of suggestions coming soon and this idea would compliment them well!

It shouldn’t have too much of an effect though. Maybe small increases if your tour is doing well...Now days, albums and singles are released to promote tours since that is where the money is made in these times. Right now touring isn’t really about promoting your music that is already released. But it would be cool to promote a specific album while touring.

Yes and I wouldn’t even mind having the ability to edit a artist discography into the editor...I can see myself doing such a thing for all the top tier artist at least.

In a future version of the game, will it be possible to populate a artist's prior work and accomplishments in the editor? It would be cool to try and compete with the greats and break their records and accomplishments.

Yes I would love the option to rename people in game! Its been times where I wanted to give a rapper a more traditional rap name.

Lyric videos as well.

Slightly off topic, but would it be possible to add the ability to preset some relationships in the editor? I know we can create marriage and relationships on that level but it would be cool to give friendship relationships between artist and writers, other artist and producers. Would also be nice to preset favorite studios.

Real life royalty rates range from 10-20 percentage. New artist aren't going to sign a deal less than a 5% royalty let alone 1% lol. They are better off signing a 360 deal...

Rapper(s) & DJ band combinations seem to be missing. Would be cool to also see Singer/Rapper Combinations

I know we chose our distribution when we are about to put out the album in game but will it be possible to sign distribution deals so we won't have to select a distributor every time will release something? I real life, a lot of record companies are distributed but their parent company.