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.