Welcome to an unofficial but great guide. This is a detailed guide that will take you through all of the game Idle Pop Music Incremental, including additional information and tips along the way. This guide is formatted in chronological order, meaning the deeper into the guide you go, the later in-game it will be.
When you first open the game, a few tabs are shown up. You start in the "Popularity" tab. It has the button "Generate 1 point", which can be clicked to generate 1 popularity point in the initial game stage. Once you reach 64 popularity points, you can buy the generator. Once you buy the firsat generator, the generator generates 4 points per second, and it increases quadratically (formula: 4n², where n is the number of generators bought). The point per click increases by 1 every 16 points per second, thus the point per click after buying the first generator is 1.25 popularity points. The cost for the next generator's purchase increases exponentially by 4. So that the second generator costs 256 points. The cost formula for the n-th generator is 4^(n+2).
You can convert popularity points into tokens, which can be used to buy anything as an alternative to popularity points.
Note: This stage should take about a few hours to a day.
So, welcome to Idle Pop Music Incremental! You have begun the journey through the game, and it will be the long one.
You will see these two buttons, the "Generate 1 point" and the "Buy generator" (displayed as "Cost: x points") buttons. Additionally, you will see your number of popularity points as well as the number of tokens at the top center of the screen.
To kickstart the journey, click the "Generate 1 point" button 64 times. Here you'll immediately notice that you have 64 popularity points. Also, you'll see a notification at the top right corner informing that you have unlocked an advancement, which provides numerous benefits into the game. See the § Premise section above.
As well as the aforementioned two buttons, there is the popularity point/token conversion button found in the very first tab of the game, which states "Convert 65,536 Popularity Points to 1 Token".
Once you reach 65,536 popularity points, you can either choose to convert into the first token or dispatch the first Taylor Swift point. You best off dispatch the first Taylor Swift point, as artists are crucial features for your progression. Dispatching for any artist points subtracts your popularity points. Once you dispatch the first Taylor Swift point, you earn an additional 1.160964× generator multiplier, which would also further boost the popularity point production per click as well. You will gain your second Taylor Swift point on a dispatch at about 534,309 popularity points. Once you can dispatch at least 8 Taylor Swift points, you have the option to dispatch 25% of the maximum number of the particular artist's points.
The generator multiplier formula per Taylor Swift points: log4(X + 4), where X is the number of unspent Taylor Swift points
Taylor Swift point gain per dispatch, relative to the popularity points: 2^(Y^(1/4)×16), where Y is the number of Taylor Swift point gain per dispatch
There are multiple upgrades to each artists. The first Taylor Swift upgrade is the "Abysmal Token Generator", which generates 1/1,024 (0.0009765625) tokens per second per generators, costing 1 Taylor Swift point and 1 token. The second purchase of the upgrade costs 3 Taylor Swift points and 3 tokens, and the third purchase of the upgrade costs 6 Taylor Swift points and 6 tokens. The cost formula is N(N+1)/2, which is the triangular number.
The second Taylor Swift upgrade is the "Double Popularity Gain", which multiplies the popularity point gain by two per the upgrade purchased. It costs 16 Taylor Swift points and 32 tokens. The second purchase of the upgrade costs 256 Taylor Swift points and 1,024 tokens. The cost formula is 2^4N Taylor Swift points and 2^5N tokens.
After you dispatch your first Taylor Swift point, and you reach 16,777,216 popularity points, you can dispatch your second artist. These can be either the Beatles, a band that no longer exists today, as well as the two of the most well-known deceased artists, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley.
Let's take a memorial efforts! These two deceased artists have many more valuable benefits at this stage, even boosting the value of Taylor Swift as your first artist in the game.
Once you reach 4,294,967,296 popularity points, you can now choose to dispatch more early-game artists in the game, such as Madonna, Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, Beyoncé, and Katy Perry.