How to become a top rookie

I'll be honest with you: I have never been a top rookie at The Sixtyone. I have the habit of loosing every point I win, by bumping every song I like, instead of just the songs I thought were homepage material. The only reason I made it to level 16 so far, is that I occasionally prohibit myself from being Romantic. But since it's not that hard to guess what you need to become one (a good profit rating) I think even I know what it takes.

As long as you're at a low level, say something less than eleven, it's relative easy to make profit out of your bumps. As a rule of thumb you could say that the earlier you bump a song, the more profit you will get from it. The risk of loosing points on songs that don't do as well as you might have expected when you early bumped it, is not particular high. As long as you stay away from unpopular genres (classic, electronic, jazz and the likes), experimental or controversial music and poor productions, you should do fine. Songs by established artists are expensive to bump, but as long as you're at a low level, you should be able to even make profit on these. Don't take my word on it, but you shouldn't be too considered with the decline of your total score, when you browse the today page. As long as you're looking out for quality music instead of an emotional treat, you should do fine. Every point spend on good music, will return sooner or later.

Then again, you might wonder why anybody would want to be a top rookie, or a Sensei of Soul for that matter. Gaming with music probably seems a bit immoral to you. Maybe you think that bumping songs because you expect them to become popular, instead of bumping them because you like them, or camping around the upload pages just to get that first bump, is childish and even compromising. Of course you can find and enjoy the best music to be found on the Net, without clicking that big triangle. You can also perfectly support artists by commenting on their songs and walls. But if you want artist to become popular on t61 you need points and you only get these by making profit on bumps.

I know that listeners at levels below 11, who want their favorites to become everyone's favorite, can get quite frustrated by this. I've read a lot of complaints about not making enough profit to be really able to support all the great music. Just hang in there, sooner or later you reach a point where you still care for music AND games, but stop caring about points and levels. When you get there, you stop being a rookie and start being a regular. In the mean time, don't try to convince the developers of t61 that they should downgrade on the game aspect of the site. I happen to love the game - not as much as the music that arrives in uncountable measures of rhythm, tunes and lyrics, but enough to hardly ever search for indie music outside t61.