How do you gain popularity for low-pop artists?

[kysmartman]

Some fairly well-known artists in the real-world database start with basically no reputation/popularity. What steps do I need to take to boost them up to where they can start getting on even the lowest-level TV shows? I've started releasing some EPs with phenomenal songs, and they're charting fairly well (basically by default as albums are just now starting to get released en masse but still). However, that has meant a boost from 1 all the way up to 3. Do I just have to dump a ton of money by buying ad spots on the shows to get them on? I hopefully got 2 of them to be openers on the Ariana Grande tour though their calendars don't show it (and I had a venue bug while trying to manually set it up so had to hit the marketing button to do it so that might have wiped it out even though it's on a different step of the proces).

 

Though I'm wondering if there isn't an artificial ceiling that gets assigned when you start a game (what that scout potential thing does???) because I've got a band that seems to have settled into the 30s in most regions with a 40ish in North America after their first single went #1 almost everywhere. It's fine if it is a slower grind than real life.

[Phil-R2S]

Your Artists > Book Show > Hi we are looking for our artist [Artist's Name] to come to your show > Choose any option (if your request is declined, try again until you get a date)

Book every show in a region and their popularity in that region should rise quickly.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Phil-R2S

[MrDash]

Try gaining reps in one's own continent first by booking the least popular TV shows available. Eventually, they'll gain enough recognition to book better TV shows.

Edited August 29, 2021 by MrDash

[kysmartman]

Okay, it's a little weird that selling things doesn't gain you any pop, and I will add that doing the "My rep is high enough so reconsider that no" does in fact hurt your label's rep as I've just about stopped gaining label rep week over week despite practically owning the top 10 singles charts everywhere for 2.5 months now.

What is causing some of my artists to struggle gaining artist hype? I've got some that will nearly max that out right before their first single is released, and I've got others that are barely halfway there or worse with their 2nd single coming out (I space them out every 35-56 days). And that's with full weekdays of 2 shows each plus every weekend show I can get them on. The singles are pretty much the same quality. No one has lower than a 70 live rating or poor charisma, but since you can't see their show scores, you don't know if they're just randomly bombing (that report never showed my artists at all so I turned it off as I couldn't care less what anyone else was doing). But it is killing a few of my artist's sales since that is a massive part of how sales are calculated in the game. Do you just have to throw the kitchen sink at the single advertising campaign? That wouldn't explain all of it as some of my most popular artists are the ones struggling. Or is it strictly tied to their social medium subs as that would explain it as they don't have a massive following yet though it's growing. Makes zero sense that the game would auto-generate a ton of very popular artists with poor social medium subs if that's going to kill your sales.

[Phil-R2S]

My artists have gained popularity from selling. Unfortunately, it was only +1 in certain regions.

Your label's rep can fall drastically if something (album leaks, fan attacks, twitter hacks, etc.) bad happens to your artists. 

Either the hype bar for singles is bugged or it can only fill to a certain extent depending on the genre.

Depending on the genre and month sales will be different throughout the year. Plus, the economy and musical tastes change with each country.

I've done countless playthroughs with Beyonce and I swear the advertising campaigns don't affect sales. If anything, it seems it helps with award nomination and social media followers. Take that with a grain of salt.  

If I'm wrong about any of these, someone please correct me.

Edited August 31, 2021 by Phil-R2S

[kysmartman]

Nothing has fallen and I've had no negative incidents to my artists, just others periodically. The label rep gains have basically tailed off since I started having to spam that option in the media visits for some of my less popular artists. Yeah, the singles bar sometimes only hits halfway for a lot of them, but that wasn't what I was talking about as that doesn't seem to have much impact on sales. The ARTIST'S hype bar does by a metric ton, and I was just wondering why the gains vary so wildly between artists when I'm doing the exact same stuff. And that's part of the game's major problem as practically no AI-controlled artist has any hype because they do no media appearances or just 1 show for a week or so (which is bugged as they'll do a weekday show each day for 7 days, including the weekend), and combine that with awful songs, produce no sales no matter how much reputation the artist has around the world. No artist hype=really lousy sales no matter their reputation.

 

It really came to a head with one of the AI-generated artists I signed that is over 80 in the US and either Asia or Europe along with Australia (which doesn't matter at all), and she didn't even peg 200k in sales in her debut week because her artist hype meter (the one on the artist's main page with their social stats) was barely anything. But I've got a few other less popular artists that their hype meters maxed out sell infinitely better the same week even if it wasn't their debut week.

Edited September 1, 2021 by kysmartman

[Phil-R2S]

Interesting. Just play around with the game. Try things you wouldn't normally. That's all I do.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Phil-R2S

[kysmartman]

Honestly, I think it is simply down to a bug. I had been trying that suggestion of just send your artist out to do media before ever hyping a single, and it had built a little bit over 2 weeks. Loaded the game up and right back down to 0. The other one that had been building a little with her single that alarmed me dropped a bunch of her hype too. This game has so much potential, but it is a massively buggy mess. I hadn't even advanced a day just stopped because I needed to go to bed and it takes me an hour to go through the charts every Monday. I hope the dev can come back and fix all the bugs or sell it to someone else to do it and give it the huge graphical and ease-of-use additions it badly needs as there isn't another game like this on the market. Of course the only other series on this genre died a horrible death because that guy couldn't squash all his bugs either. Wonder how Chart Wars managed to be so great for so long without being a buggy mess.

[Phil-R2S]

Chart Wars introduced me to these games. It had bugs too. I'd always get far into a playthrough and my game would stop simulating. It drove me nuts. Eventually, Rob left and never looked back. It was my favorite until I discovered Music Wars.

The original version of the game is amazing. It's easy to understand and the layout is interesting. The sequel added some improvements but changed what I loved about the original. It had bugs, but the game was playable. Most of those bugs carried over to the last game in the series. 

It's the best one by far. There are some interesting features in it I wish Mark would implement into R2S. Unfortunately, after playing it for an hour or two, the game will freeze on a loading screen or crash.

Trust me, R2S is the best of both worlds. 1.1 and 1.2 are legendary! I enjoy 1.3 even with the bugs. Why? The amount of features Mark packed into this game is amazing. I don't think it'll be topped any time soon.

If there's one thing I know, Mark will be back. He always comes back. Lurking for the past five years has taught me that. 

[kysmartman]

I owned Music Wars. It was pretty good, but the bugs and the dev's harsh tone made me question how good the sequel would be. And then it turned out to be bad. Is 1.2 not buggy? I had never played it much, but I just don't understand how 1.3 could be this buggy. And that artist hype thing looks a little like a display bug as the next day had most of their hype back, but just some artists don't gain much of anything that I'd just love to find out what I'm doing wrong. But the AI is just atrocious. I'm basically playing the game now to make enough money to save some of the artists I enjoy irl because the AI is just bad.

[Phil-R2S]

1.2 wasn't as feature rich compared to 1.3, so it wasn't as buggy.

Edited September 6, 2021 by Phil-R2S