Points Going Into the Ether

[Ling]

I'm stumped by the point awards system. I max bumped "Man In the Moon" when it was at 397 points... it's now sitting pretty at 663 points and so far has earned me zero points. The weird thing is that other songs that have gained less mileage have reaped at least a point or two. I've tried emailing the contact at T61, but I've never gotten a reply. Grr... any ideas what I should do next?

[Kalei]

I noticed the same thing this weekend @scrivener. There were some popular artists that I bumped hoping for a "Stefanie" return but they yielded little - if anything at all. I'm trying to refrain from bumping today (well, as little as possible) to see if i can hit level 11 by the end of the day. Seems I would have been there already if I didn't bump on Halloween & yesterday. Not having internet consistently over the past week has helped my points to grow. I'm going to be more manini with my point spending until I hit 11. Not sure if that's wise, but after this weekend's lousy returns, I'm hoping this strategy will pay off. I'm thinking that those tracks that I had hope for will, like you said, lose their momentum. I hope not, though.

[Greg]

@Scrivener Yeah, you got it, man. The weekends see far less activity both with fewer listeners logging on and for shorter time and also fewer uploads. It usually starts to pick up Sunday night. Holidays are even slower.

Songs are on the rack as soon as they're uploaded and don't get off the rack until they hit the homepage. The rack is randomized for each listener and has a mix of really old, really new and everything in between. Tracks tend to lose their momentum at different rates. If a song starts out cold, say 0 - 10 bumps in the first half an hour than it'll have a much harder time gaining any momentum. If it starts out fast, say 20 - 50 bumps in the first half hour, then it's got a great shot to carry that momentum into a homepage berth. The traditional death knell for momentum is the end of the song's first 24 hrs on the site when it leaves the browse by today page. I've never heard of a song making the homepage from rack bumpage, it's too sporadic, too random to generate much momentum. It might have happened but the usual route is for a song to garner enough listeners in the first 24hrs to further publicise it in tuneboxes and placing it on their profile page, etc. to get it the magic# of bumps and bumpers. The # of bumps and listeners a song needs varies greatly depending on genre and artist level.

@Kalei That's a pretty solid strategy. Most frequent users have a decent point income but can 'squander' it on unprofittable songs or revives. If you're looking for points for a level-up hold off bumping songs that have been on the site awhile, as you're gonna be a late bumper on a popular song or an early bumper on an unpopular song, either way a definite short term point loss. Bump the sure fire popular new songs if you get 'em early or cheap and take your chances on anything else. Level up and then splurge on a revive or an unpopular personal favorite - you'll have another bump to give it then.

[modsuperstar]

I have found a formula that works pretty well. I never bump anything that is above 100 points anymore. I used to use the Super Bump script, but since it was banned I've had to alter my strategy a bit. Essentially I go to the today page and search for songs that have received between 25 and 75 bumps. That usually tells you which songs are moving up quickly and allows you to get in at a level that will give you a good return should it hit the stratosphere. I find this strategy pays off more often then not. It used to be a lot easier using the script when it would tell you in what amount of time a song had achieved its bumps though.

[Kalei]

I'm going to try that formula as well @modsuperstar. It seems that when I bump something that has 100+ bumps already I still wont get a single point when it's up around the mid to high 200's. I don't get it. I'll try the 25-75 formula and see how that works.

[Kalei]

I'm still stumped on this darn point system. I'm noticing that since hitting level 11, I seem to get less points per bump. Take for instance the song Sexy_Song by: Black Diamond Love...I bumped it 2x as bumper #12. To date I have received only 41 points for my purchase.

My sister (@ybnormal) was bumper #16 and only bumped it once. She has yielded 108 points to date.

She's a newbie and was only at level 3 last I checked. I know it has to do with the number of bumpers behind you (not # of bumps) but still.....shouldn't I have more points than her for this one? It's so confusing!

[Kalei]

I poked around on T61 and found their own forum explaining the multi-bumping. I thought that bumping a song more than once would increase your points more if the song is a hit. Not really. It's meant to help the song get to the Home Page faster or to make others think there is a lot of interest in the song therefore bumping it themselves. Here's their explanation:

"We're also bringing back multi-bumping on all pages, but with a caveat. While you still stand to receive more rewards from multi-bumping, the effects of multi-bumping on rewards have been greatly reduced. We hope this will encourage listeners to use multi-bumps for the purpose of influencing songs they want to hit the home page, instead of having investment incentives primarily drive the multi-bumping.

The reason behind our previous change was to encourage listeners to use multi-bumping to influence songs mainly. But we didn't take into account for the fact that multi-bumping is also used legitimately by many listeners to influence songs before they hit the home page, and not just after."

I'm noticing that I make more per "good" song if I only bump it once. Weird system.

Here's their NEWEST Blog Site: http://thesixtyone.tumblr.com/ They've also announced a new leveling system starting sometime next week. And a new "Global Rank" on your Profile Page. I'm currently ranked at 2811th.

[scrivener]

I've been aware of fewer points for higher-level bumpers for a few days now; those Shannon Hurley songs got Fran 200+ points but I only got just over a hundred each for them, except for the one that hit the homepage and got me about 170 so far.

I knew multi-bumping wasn't a great move, points-wise, but sometimes you just gotta do it. If you are playing for points, early multi-bumping can draw browse-watchers' attention to songs you have high hopes for, but it takes a LOT of bumpers to earn you back your points that way.

It's all best when you genuinely like a song and don't care if your points total goes down; then you feel great when others jump on even if you never really do break even. :)