Exploring the Dynamic World of Track Creation & Competition

Published in

Music Mogul

6 min readDec 11, 2023

In our previous discussion, we delved into how players can acquire the CRED fungible token through Performances. Now, let’s unravel the process of earning the other fungible token, CNOTES. To achieve this, players must step into the world of recording studios, cut compelling tracks, and participate in the weekly global streaming competition vs. all other Moguls. This is where the top 500 tracks in the selected musical genre are rewarded. One genre is picked per week.

Recording Tracks

To initiate the recording process, simply click on “RECORDING” in the top navigation bar and select “RENT ROOM.”

Three room options will be presented for your consideration. Upon paying the rental fee, your chosen room will be added to your recording studio inventory, found in the “RECORDING” tab on the navigation menu. These three slots are decided by random dice rolls. This “rented room” is an in-game item and not an NFT to be bought or sold.

There are five levels of recording studios, each offering distinct bonuses & costs:

Bronze: 3 CRED cost (0% track quality bonus) 56% drop chance. Song quality cap B-
Silver: 10 CRED cost (1.5% track quality bonus) 23 % drop chance. Song quality cap B+
Gold: 42 CRED cost (5% track quality bonus) 14% drop chance. Song quality cap A
Platinum: 104 CRED cost (15% track quality bonus) 6% drop chance. Song quality cap S-
Diamond: 228 CRED cost (20% track quality bonus) 1% drop chance. No cap

* Changes that will be coming post-launch you should be aware of (because the current room rental fee is priced with this in mind)

Bronze Recording Room allows for 1 Crew member and 1 piece of Gear
Silver Recording Room 1 Crew member and 3 pieces of Gear
Gold Recording Room 2 Crew members and 4 pieces of Gear
Platinum Recording Room allows for 3 Crew members and 4 pieces of Gear
Diamond Recording Room allows for 4 Crew members and 6 pieces of Gear

Entering the Studio

While going it alone in the recording booth is possible, the journey is often enhanced with experienced Crew members aided by top-notch Gear. Before expanding your team, let’s explore the array of recording rooms available for track creation.

Each room has no artist rarity limitations, and are single-use. This may change in the future, but for now there are no such restrictions. Players can equip up to six pieces of Gear and enlist four Crew members per room. As noted above future updates will limit Crew and Gear per Recording Room type, but early adopters won’t be limited and will receive an advantage over late adopters. The four available Crew disciplines are “Composer,” “Sound Engineer,” “Producer,” and an “Artist Manager.” Gear options include “Headphones,” “Mic,” “Rack Effects,” “Amp,” “Monitor,” and “Recording Desk.” It’s important to note that these categories are represented as NFTs and are single-use. The act of equipping them (not necessarily using them) burns the NFT, rendering it non-returnable. There is a modal in game that also will make the player aware of this.

Staff this room with Crew (with the correct genre bonuses) and Gear for the best results

Upon securing a room, enter it, equip your Gear, deploy your Crew, and artist NFT. Then hit the “RECORD” button to generate a track. The track will be randomly assigned a title and a quality score, ranging from an “F” letter grade (lowest) to an S+ (highest). Higher letter grades increase the likelihood of receiving a significant number of streams in the weekly competition. To get a better sense of how track grading works, check out “How does track grading work?” below. A lack of Gear/Crew will result in a lower letter grade, while higher quality Crew and Gear lead to higher grades and, subsequently, more streams.

Artists bring their own set of bonuses into the recording room. As the artist NFT rarity increases, so does the track quality bonus:

Common Artist NFT: 0%
Uncommon Artist NFT: 3%
Rare Artist NFT: 7.5%
Epic Artist NFT: 11%
Legendary Artist NFT: 22%

Each recorded song is a one-time entry into the weekly competition, but there is no expiry date on your track, allowing you to submit it in different genre-themed weeks. Since there’s no cost to enter tracks, it’s encouraged to submit all creations. Payouts are awarded for each track’s placement on the chart.

To manage and view your tracks, click on the “LABEL” button in the navigation bar. There, you’ll find a comprehensive list of your possessions, including sortable tracks by genre as well as their status.

How does track grading work?

In order to give yourself the highest graded track possible you need to understand the formula. While we will not list the formulas exactly, we can share with you that the recording room and all your NFTs you utilize in the aggregate establish a floor of how the track will be graded. Throw a low end artist in a low end room with no Gear or Crew, you can expect to get a low grade as the floor will start off exceedingly low. In fact if you do this you may get a score of an “F” which happens .3% of the time. Take that same artist and put it in a room with a lot of highly rated Crew, Gear, and the recording room itself is of a high enough quality, your floor will be appreciably higher.

Then we will take the NFT Artist you are using to record your track and take on an additional measure that will represent the ceiling of your grade. The higher the ceiling, the better chance you have for a higher grade. After the floor and ceiling have been established we roll on a value that will map to a letter grade. This letter grade is then taken into account when we see how many streams the track will get in the weekly streaming competition.

Now, armed with this knowledge, venture into the recording room and make some magic!

Once you have created a track head over to the “COMPETITION” section to see which genre is being contested that week and see what tracks are eligible to enter.

Click the “SUBMIT” button on any of your tracks you wish to enter. The WEEKLY COMPETITION section (shown above) lets you know when the competition ends and which genre players will be competing in. Check back after the above date to see how many CNOTES you may have won.

You can then head back to your LABEL and see which tracks you have submitted into the current competition.

You will get CNOTES for every single track you have placed in the Top 500 distributed relative to where you placed. The CNOTES payout breakdown is as follows: