Has anyone tried having a band or a musician play on an owned business or just for tips as a source of income?

For those with OFB, did you use a community lot where you decorated it into a club of some sort? Did you use a home business? Do you use the ticket machine thing where you charge them per hour, or do you just rely on tips?

What did you do to make sure the musician(s) were the main attraction? For example, if you added a bar or coffee vendor, would the customers just go to that rather than listen to the musicians?

How much tips do you get at the end of their day/shift? Is it enough to be their main job? Do you recommend this as a business/ is it fun? :D


I rarely use instruments since everyone seems to want to use them through the night and forever and ever. But there are probably hacks now that could fix that. I have a sim in college who I will try and plan to be a musician and thought I'd try having a business for it. So I thought I'd ask for those who experienced with this before

I did a home business for one of my families and it was the mother who ran the it since her husband and children were at work and school and for the first time it was successful!
oh and the whole family contributed in it in the weekends and after work/school time.

I like to make "professional buskers," myself. They own an instrument -- generally either a violin or a guitar (bass or otherwise), and since I have the hack that allows Sims to access their inventories on community lots, each day I have them stick their instrument in their inventory and travel to a community lot. (I don't make a lot for them; generally I have them travel to the neighborhood's park, or sometimes an outdoor cafe, if the neighborhood has one). There, they pull their instrument out of their inventory and then they perform for tips all day. (Or night, if they're a night owl.) Then, they put their instrument back in their inventory and go home. When they start out, and their Creativity is low, they don't make much. When they have high creativity, they do quite well. Some of mine will bring home $1000+ a day for about 6 hours or so of busking.

I've never done this with a whole band, just with individuals, but I think it'd work with a band, too. I'd probably do each day of busking as a "Just for fun" outing (if they didn't all live together) and then make them all selectable at the community lot so that no one wanders off. (Or! I could just teleport in the band members I'm not actively playing and then make them selectable. Duh. ) I'd have to split the tip haul, but I guess that could be done either with familyfunds or via the money transfer function of the hacked computer that I use. Hmmmm...might have to give that a try. Might be fun to have them travel to a "club" sort of community lot, imagining it as "open mike" night.

Anyway, that's what I do. I suppose an owned business could work, too, but realistically speaking I just can't imagine a "starving artist" or an amateur garage band having the funds to be able to purchase real estate. Also, if I did that, I probably wouldn't let them have the money perks. That would strain my ability to suspend disbelief, I think.

iCad, may I ask where you got that hack that allows them to access their inventories on community lots? Seems more realistic and TS3-like xP

And wow over $1000 a day? thats more than I expect. At first I did think about having a small jazz club where my sim can play the piano or something. He comes from a wealthy family and I just realized I wanted his brother to own nightclubs too. Maybe I'll have the brother own the club, hire the musician to play and maybe split the money together.. I'm not sure how that would work out but maybe I'll try it lols.

I finally used some hack I got from SimWardobe (I think) - the hack allows a business owner to hire people to play in a band. My business owner owns a nightclub and I put band instruments in the club, hired high creativity people to play at the club and charged admission using the ticket machine. Since the business owner wasn't a member of the band he didn't get any of the tip money it seems - but he got all of the ticket money. People enjoyed the band, at first they would just tip them and do nothing else. Eventually people were dancing to the music or watching and cheering. I think the members of the band got about $400-$700 in tips. Sims are generous tippers when the person performing is very creative.

It must be this:
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=204467
Although it's for Pets, it works fine with AL, I had no problems with it so far.

Yep, that's the one. I now have all EPs and most SPs thanks to blowing an Amazon gift certificate on a shopping spree, and that hack still works just fine. It's nice because it also lets you enter Build/Buy mode on a community lot, which can be useful in certain situations. (ETA: In the comment thread for the hack, there's an update for Bon Voyage. That's the one I have and it worked when I had just up to Freetime less BV and still works now that I have the whole damn enchilada. )

And yep, a number of my max-Creativity buskers make quite a bit of money. Each tip they receive is usually $100, sometimes $250, so if they get just ten tips (and that's not hard on a busy-enough community lot), they're doing well. (Wish it was like that in real life! ) And if they busk every day and you have the hack that allows skilling on community lots...Well, they max out their Creativity quite quickly.

Frankly, I do this more than using the game's Music career, because the career irrationally bugs me, as a professional musician myself. I find it weird and sort of vaguely, strangely offensive that a concert pianist (which is what I am IRL although I teach far more than I play concerts nowadays) and/or a symphony conductor "goes on" to be a Rock God. :p

Yes! It's a lot funner than I expected.



Because the band lives in an apartment and funding everything themselves, they all have day jobs and chipped in to buy a small community lot to do gigs during their free time. The goal is to eventually get enough money to buy a bigger lot and/or a small club to perform.

I use the ticket machine, but set the ticket price really low so there's no need to have sales people convincing sims to see the band. The revenue from it is primarily to cover the cheapskates who don't tip and the members of the band who are not a part of a household and thus, need a salary.


I give them no alternative but to watch the band Literally, aside from the stage and the seats, there's only a bathroom, shower, microwave and a photo booth on the lot.

The stages themselves have gate doors at the entrances, so when the band takes a break I can lock them & the audience won't be able to use the instruments.


About 3 members of the band live in the household, and together they bring in about 3000-4000 a day. Buut they all have capped or close to capping their creativity skill and music enthusiasm, so they draw in more tips.

Another draw is a highly skilled and attractive romance sim. He attracts lots of sims (and tips) and during the breaks he can sweet talk them all to become dedicated groupies who'll always catch a show and tip :D

And when they were first starting out I had the band call whoever they could to come over, just to draw in a decent crowd while the business was still at a low level. For once I happily said "Yes!" to the "Can I bring a friend?" question - "Yes, bring all your buddies and their parents, and their kids, and your boss too!"


Overall, I think it's really fun. The members of the band didn't really know each other all that well but were all in the same situation - low money, high skills, loooved music. So I got to put together a mishmash of sims I'd normally would never put together and got an interesting storyline out of it.

But I think it would be just as fun if it were a garage band of teens, a musical family or talented homeless sims looking for a buck or whatever you can come up with =)

Don't other sims come to stand on stage in front of them all the time to listen? I always wanted to have sims playing on stage, but thought that it would look weird if a crowd of other sims would come on stage to listen. If you lock it, then I suppose they will throw tantrums about not being able to go there, and anyway they can't give tips if they can't reach your musical instruments...

Some of my Uni students spend time playing for tips to make money. In clubs with a bar or coffee, a pool table, a dart board, a bubble blower, etc., sims still stop and tip the musicians, especially those with high creativity points.

And only some of my Uni students play for tips, as it's too easy a way to make money. $1,000 in tips is not uncommon if their creativity is high.



I totally agree with this! I'm coming from the other side, though. As a fan of rock music and bands that started out playing in garages and touring in broke-ass vans, I find it ridiculous that their Rock Gods go through levels like concert violinist. I keep thinking, constantly, about writing a custom rock career where the levels are things like garage band, club band, video star, grammy winner, rock and roll hall of famer, etc.

But I've never done a custom career, I'm lazy about getting started, and frankly, that's a lot of damned chance cards to write! I should still get off the pot and learn how to do it already, as I'd like to have a few rock stars but I can't stand the career track as is.

Of course the promotion levels are annoying (they are in all the professions), but I find it's simple enough to define the levels differently in the storytelling field. Mary Munny was never a concert pianist; she was charting and playing to sold-out crowds. If I get a musician better suited to classical, or jazz, or whatever, I'll redefine those levels. It would help the illusion if you used a mod to change the work outfits, too - no classical musician is going onstage in the Rock Goddess outfit. (She's an elder now, with no desire to retire, and even as unpicky as I am, I rather dread seeing her in that thing on her upcoming workday. Mutton should not dress as lamb.)

I would also like to know this...

I've been thinking about cloning and changing some of the careers around (specifically, the Medical and Music careers, and maybe Oceanography, especially because I think it's completely ridiculous that the top position in Medical makes so little, especially if you break it down per hour.) I have some other projects to finish up first, but I'd be happy for any suggestions if you wanted to split the Music career into 2 custom careers (one classical, one recording artist.)

If you wanted one of those custom careers to override the default so it would fulfill LTW, I'd be interested in trying to figure out how to do that too - I think it's just a matter of cloning the career and not altering the GUID. I've just got to figure out where each of the careers is in the game folders, so I can clone them.

If a career could be made such that it will generate an LTW with it, I would be VERY interested. I only put Sims into a career if they have an LTW to max one of them out, so I've found that, for me, custom careers, as cool as they can be, are pretty useless. But if there were associated LTWs...Well, I'd gladly let the Music career in my game be overwritten by something that reflected a more realistic classical music career. I'm not really interested in having rock stars in my neighborhood. I have nothing against rock music but...I guess I'm just biased.

But yeah, in general, the careers are screwed up in many ways. Like Peni, I kind of make up my own "story" to account for the weirdness, but I'd love if I didn't have to do that. I don't know how to mess with careers, myself, and I'd be kind of afraid to mess with the Maxis ones for fear of screwing up, but if someone else would mess with them to make them more realistic, I'd be totally up for downloading the results.

@wthrwthoutyu: Yeah, I suppose the Music career would also bug someone of more of a rock bent, too. It'd be nice if Maxis had made the two "tracks" separate. They really are very, very different processes. Most rock musicians I know aren't and don't need to be classically trained, and while most classical musicians can play rock/pop stuff, too (I love playing/singing Elton John's stuff, myself, and have done so from a very young age), they generally have a completely different mindset, so they don't play rock "properly." But I can understand why Maxis didn't make two careers. I can understand why the careers are the way they are, in general. But that doesn't mean that I have to LIKE it.

Yeah, they do come on stage, and it does look weird ^^; But it's the only way to receive tips so I just let it happen. After the guests have made their rounds on stage some of them do really sit down. They may not actually be "listening" to the band, but it looks like it so I'm content

I wonder if you use moveobjects on and move the tip jar would that work? I'll try it and see.

Ig135, since you did try a business with the ticket machine, does your customers gain stars/ business level rise up with that as a business?

To cool but i think it's awesome

I once asked in the Help how to discover the GUIDs of default careers but got no replies, it's probably because it's not the creators' forum Anyway, since I haven't uploaded anything, I have no access to it. But you can ask there. I'm really interested in it, too.

That said, I know one career on this site that overwrites the business career when installed. But it isn't music, so it can't be used to overwrite music.

And yeah, most career levels are bad! Especially those the descriptions of which try to sound funny. I'm playing a realistic game, and they tell me that my sim is a superhero, or the hand of poseidon... And these are only titles, the descriptions are much worse. I just don't read them lately

That's why my realistic sims get stopped at Level 9 of the Law Enforcement and Oceanography careers, and I don't play Adventurers much. I'm probably alone in this, but I'd prefer it if the EAxis careers were split into realistic and non-realistic careers, instead of mixing tracks within the same path.

I may go ask on the Creators' Forum. It'll still be a while (I'm in the middle of a bunch of different custom careers, working on a bunch of fandom-based careers, but I'm hoping to finish at least 3 of those fairly soon. It's just that writing chance cards takes forever.)

There was a list of the GUIDs for careers at the SimPE site. (Although you can find out the GUID of a specific career by putting a sim into it, then checking the career GUID on the tab in the Sim Browser in SimPE.

(And I'm sorry I missed answering that when it was asked in Help. It might have been when I had no internet for several months.)


Edit: http://simpeforum.ambertation.de/si...Memory-Question has the list.

Thanx! I didn't know that such a list existed, that's really handy.

If you are in the music career you always put the guitar (special job item) in your inventory and take it to a community lot you own or in the section of your home business. You can make use of the charge machine and offer music lessons to other sims. You can also DJ, freestyle, break dance and perform on a platform for tips (if you have nightlife). I suggest doing it for fun or extra income since you do not make a lot of simoleons. This suggestion is not for everyone, but I offer home music lessons for friends on the sims and as payment I use the kaching cheat. Then it seems fair. I wish there was an easier way.

Make the venue a concert hall or park if you want the musicians to be the main attraction. Coffee machines and bars will draw the customers to them. They need to have nothing else that they can do, other than standing around chatting with each other, if you want the musicians to be the main attraction.

But the musicians did pretty well, even competing with chess tables and dart boards. Actual values depend on skill and charisma, but I had one guy getting 1000 simoleons a night.

Why on charisma?

P.S. About editing default careers, it's so much easier than I thought... I just read up on how to find and clone them in object workshop. This way no GUID is needed and nothing needs to be recreated anew, you can just open the full default career and edit it normally like any other, and since the GUID isn't changed it will overwrite the default one. Yay, finally my natural scientists won't walk out naked with only a leaf on their body and won't go soaring into the sky!