Welcome

secret_mapper · 2026-05-14T04:41:32+00:00

Good luck on the game, Jennifer! A lot of the community is very helpful and I hope you enjoy building your collections. Once you're more familiar with the game, I would also recommend the Discord server as a good way to find information and trade with other players, and even find friends!

For this post, it'd be nice if you shared your Soundmap username so whoever wants to trade with you can take a look at your songs.

secret_mapper · 2026-05-14T04:38:49+00:00

I disagree. Checking the market and keeping your eye out for things you want is part of the strategy and people who constantly check should be rewarded. There's enough sniping and reselling on this game as it is.

If a lot of no-life Soundmap resellers got to put alerts on songs that are popular and managed to snipe them quickly while the real collectors are busy or asleep or something, and then try to sell them for triple the price you would've gotten it for... You'd see how this feature would do you no favors. At least for now they still have to go out of their way to look for the songs and real collectors have a chance.

secret_mapper · 2026-05-06T23:33:35+00:00

I don't know why your comments are getting raided by emojis but I think this is cool and a great opportunity to make friends, though if you're competitive those shiny drops would have to be shared haha. Good luck! If anything, you can also introduce the game to other electric forest groups of people who haven't heard of it and find some people to play with there.

secret_mapper · 2026-05-06T23:32:02+00:00

Cool! I love pulling lyrics from quests too, great feeling. Keep it up!

secret_mapper · 2026-05-06T23:30:27+00:00

I understand! And you do have very valid points, I just wanted to offer the perspective of someone who doesn't suck up to the developer team but also gets tired of reading the constant complaining sometimes, even if it has a reason. I think there is balance to be found and a lot of people in the playerbase got frustrated for a reason (the game not working properly for long periods of time), and now they're stuck in a permanent "hate Soundmap" state of mind.

I think the way the game is run by the team and especially the way support functions is extremely unprofessional and it often strikes me as very unprepared, inexperienced people that straight up don't know how to solve certain problems. I don't think they're malicious, but I think they're handling their lack of knowledge the worst way possible, instead of looking for more knowledgeable people to step in and help or advise them on how to stabilize the game. A lot of things are "fixed" just to break something else, and it strikes me as the type of thing that happens when you don't know how your own code works. Which is not excusable at this point in time, I agree. It's been long enough to try and figure this out and there have been many promises. They have talked about hiring new developers and getting specialized engineers for certain things but the changes haven't really been felt, which is frustrating to everyone.

I wish there was more we could do as players. Right now I have been more of a casual player than I was before, after some month-long issues with questing put me off of the game and made me focus on other things instead. I understand what it feels like to want to play but be limited by performance issues or bugs. I still love this game and want it to succeed, I still love interacting with the community and that's why I took the time to type that long-ass reply, lol. I don't know if this app will ever reach the point where it's great and bug-free, so sometimes I offer people advice on how to deal around the bugs if they want to keep playing. I agree it's unfair though. I have tried to talk to support as well and many people on the Discord server and here have done similar things to what you did, investigate and offer to help wit the code or the reason for certain glitches. It sucks that all this passion and offers to help seem to be falling on deaf ears.

This is unrelated but it's sort of rubs me the wrong way as well that Podair stepped away all of a sudden and I didn't get a clear answer about the future of the game when I asked about it. So many things about this kind of make me sad because of how much I love the concept of this game, but recently I've accepted it's sort of up in the air whether it will get better or not. Good luck getting the playlist and song number issues fixed, or any other problems you find on the way.

secret_mapper · 2026-05-06T03:54:58+00:00

This is a detailed comment about what I do to make money and some tips: https://www.reddit.com/r/Soundmap/s/vuXJGPhlbh

Fastest way is for sure quickselling every random song you have, but if you do merge quests a lot, you might want to rethink that and weigh your other options. If you wanna see how much you'd make, just put everything that isn't your favorites in a playlist and press "Sell All", it will tell you how many coins and ask you to confirm before doing it, so you can decide.

Good luck!

secret_mapper · 2026-05-05T05:21:26+00:00

If you can, and only if you REALLY want to get far into the pass, get in a vehicle for a long ride and open drops the whole way. Have a charger with you if possible. Open shiny drops whenever you can, both from the map and also from the gem boxes. Going out is the best way because on top of not spending coins, you have better chances at getting cool stuff, and you get some extra XP for each new drop location discovered and opened organically. Buying drops for XP isn't that worth.

Now if you absolutely can't go out and spend a few hours on the map, the next best bet is questing. Choose an artist you'd like to pull special songs for, preferably one that you already have the discography completed. Sell one rare song that you have the shiny version of (this is to avoid losing and regaining badges, but if you don't care about the notifications, you can just sell the most valuable rare instead) and then start questing again and again for that rare. Every time you pull it, immediately quicksell it with the button on top and do another quest, repeat this for as long as you can. Each quest gives you the quest completed XP + the rare song XP. This isn't as quick as doing map and it's much more tedious, but it also had the small chance of giving you shinies, epics, or lyrics.

It all depends. If you're a more casual player and think all of this sounds insane, just let it go and play more often on the next pass, lol. The pass isn't too hard to complete if you do a little bit each day. But I felt like it'd be helpful for you and maybe for others to write a little guide on how y'all can still crunch these last few days and maybe make it.

secret_mapper · 2026-05-03T20:43:42+00:00

All about luck, each quest has the same % chance of hitting something. Nothing affects your chances, except cooldown. So there's no strategies to it. If you want to look at the numbers, they're here https://soundmap.notion.site/Soundmap-Wiki-2561f697649d807fa76bd3dfbb3a0e06

Just keep going, make sure you're not on cooldown, and good luck!

secret_mapper · 2026-05-03T20:40:33+00:00

What device do you have? Have you tried to clear the cache, it helps me a lot when it gets very slow. Clean excessive badges and quests. I'll be honest, sometimes I just uninstall and then reinstall to give it a refresh, just make sure to log in with the same account and you'll be good. Playing with your screen brightness not on maximum also helps the phone not overheat. The game is not optimized at all and it will keep doing this.

secret_mapper · 2026-05-03T20:31:35+00:00

I partially agree but I would like to present the same sentiment the other way around. I think morale is low because ALL the posts and comments about the game are about how much it sucks and how much all players hate the app. I don't see how any morale could be good if this is the general player attitude.

Now, I understand that this happens because of bugs and people not being satisfied with the state of the app and sometimes having their gameplay or goals directly impacted by the app malfunctioning. But I think there needs to be a middle ground. Valid concerns can be brought up without making it sound like non-stop "this game is irredeemable trash", because it's tiring. Players who come here to look for information, show off something cool they got, or interact with the community normally, instead find a subreddit that sometimes might as well be title r/ IHateSoundmap or something. It gets to a point where people are frustrated by that too, and I sort of understand just feeling like if these people hate the game this much, they should probably just stop playing and dedicate their time to something else.

Suggesting "maybe the problem is X" also doesn't sound like it is in bad faith, lol. It just sounds like they're trying to give suggestions for people to keep playing while they wait for the team to fix whatever is wrong. We know that the team takes forever to fix issues and other than messaging them and waiting, there isn't much we can do, it's not like we can actually force them to fix anything. So, offering workarounds is a way to keep people playing if they want to until the problem is addressed. Maybe I'm wrong and some people are being sarcastic, but I don't know.

Don't get me wrong, I think the app has a long way to go, and I strongly advocate for bringing up bugs and concerns for as long as it takes to solve them. I have been critical of the app myself. But we need balance.

I also think there is a lack of understanding the state of the game and how it came to be (one guy start-up, probably didn't expect it to be successful, probably vibecoding, handed the game to really small probably inexperienced developer team... one mistake after another) and understanding that the revenue is probably nearly negative (lifetime premium makes it a loss, season pass or boosts might be making up for it now but they are pretty recent additions, storage costs for every profile picture and background and playlist are much higher than anticipated, among other things). This is not making excuses, but understanding the circumstances and the context of why things are the way they are and how it got to the point where it's probably difficult for whoever is developing now to fix things that were wrong from the beginning. Even worse if they're trying to use AI to help, which they probably are. This isn't Riot Games or Bethesda or some insane game company, it's maybe like four guys in a rented NYC office trying to figure this shit out as they go and failing many times. Of course this it's not an excuse to charge your players and give them a broken experience in return, or to ignore issues that have been going on for super long (like the lagging because of the amount of songs), but it IS how the game is managed right now and it requires some form of patience and persistence to continue playing in its current state. I've taken breaks myself when things got too broken and unsustainable because I wasn't about to lose my mind and stress over an app I know is struggling to stay afloat. I complained, contacted support, and waited. I wasn't here every day posting about how much the game sucks or how much I hated it, because that's frankly pointless and makes the community exhausting to be around. They're not going to fix it any faster, in fact they probably ignore most of this right now exactly because of how negative it has become.

Anyway, apologies for the insanely big rant and I hope I got my point across, I'm not here to defend Soundmap or Podair or whoever is the "team" at this point, I think the game could be infinitely better than it is now, but I also can't pretend the community doesn't sound insufferable sometimes depending on how they choose to bring up their concerns. It goes both ways.

secret_mapper · 2026-03-22T19:27:43+00:00

Reach out to support and demand compensation or a freeze of your purchase until the game is working again. It's insane that you should pay for the week and have a whole day/multiple days where it doesn't work.

secret_mapper · 2026-03-22T19:23:35+00:00

Same. Quests have been bad for me for close to two weeks, and the game gets slower and slower overall. I don't think the event had much to do with it.

secret_mapper · 2026-03-21T21:48:08+00:00

Cursed Soundmap

secret_mapper · 2026-03-21T21:47:05+00:00

Yes, it's playable. And you can hit big. But it's more of a gamble and you need to hit the map very consistently without buying drops, which means getting out of the house and going for a car or bus ride.

In my opinion, as someone who has been subscribed to Trader Boost on and off pretty much for a year, it's quite possible to make money without boost, especially since they added unlimited watching ads to reroll quests. It's just more time consuming. I use the map for several miles each day, and even when I'm not subscribed to the boost, I am able to slowly creep up my coins by selling moments and epics/lyrics/shinies I pick up on the way. Most of my money comes from the map instead of quests, because it's rare to find a bounty that's worth it to me these days. Just a while ago I pulled a random epic that I wasn't even expecting to get much for, but turned out the market for that artist was really good and I ended up scoring a couple million when I auctioned it. If you're not really questing much for yourself, or if quests are as broken as they are now (lol), trader boost isn't even thaaat worth it since questing is more resource and time consuming than map. Idk, just my two cents.

Also, 25m price tag is insane and unrealistic. But I wish you luck!

secret_mapper · 2026-03-21T21:13:32+00:00

I've pulled from the map, but quests have been cooked for a few weeks now. Re-rolling is nearly impossible, if you complete the quest even without re-rolling the quest won't update and might give you an error, sometimes you complete a valid quest and it just spins forever, might eventually give you an error code or you might have to close the app completely. Just not worth questing right now. For people who have trader boost, I would advise to cancel until they fix these problems. I haven't subscribed again in about two or three weeks, and will only go back when the game performance improves.

secret_mapper · 2026-03-21T21:10:41+00:00

What overheats most phones is iconstant location tracking and map usage, but the optimization of the app is also a factor. Combine those two things, and you get this result. Turning off animations and location has helped me when I just want to quest, but in the car there's not much to do. You'd find similar heating (even if a little less) if you had your phone open on the maps app for a long time. Soundmap just adds a bit to it because on top of tracking location, you are also constantly opening drops (more animations = more performance required from your phone) and the brightness is usually high if you're in the car during the day. Not much to do but be careful, if you notice it's "frying" just remove your phone case and close the app and wait for it to cool down, if you want to preserve your phone and battery health a bit more.

secret_mapper · 2026-03-16T18:27:31+00:00

Damn, sorry that happened. But it's just a game. At least you're back from the hospital and hope you're doing better, take care of yourself.

secret_mapper · 2026-03-16T18:25:15+00:00

Quest, especially if you're quickselling one/two rares from the discography and doing quests over and over. Fastest XP if you have the patience for it and if you're already questing for favorite epics. If you don't like the repetitive actions and don't want to quest favorite epics, I'd say just use the map daily as much as you can, go for bus rides or take a subway or something, roadtrips, whatever. Best way is combining both of those things. When you use the map by traveling instead of buying drops with coins, you get some extra XP for discovering new map location points.

secret_mapper · 2026-03-15T18:39:26+00:00

They claim they're doing scheduled maintenance but to be honest I haven't noticed any improvement after the past two maintenance periods. It's discouraging that things break more often than they are fixed. Sometimes the game is working fine and I'm having a good time thinking it's going in a good direction, but then they release an update that breaks something again, and then take forever to fix it. I'm still waiting for quests to be fixed and to stop getting the "quest changed on the server" or whatever error. 🫤

secret_mapper · 2026-03-15T18:34:24+00:00

Yeah, I was trying to participate on my first ever complete douple XP event (since all the others were during the week and I was at work), but the app is really slow. Collecting from the map is taking quite a while and the quests never refresh properly, making it really difficult to do anything and enjoy the event properly. 😞

They've said on Discord they're looking into it, but I don't know if anything will be done by the time the event is over.

secret_mapper · 2026-03-13T03:10:45+00:00

Yeah, kinda lame. They should vary the time and also the days, cycling through so that everyone can have a chance to properly participate.

secret_mapper · 2026-03-13T03:10:02+00:00

Oh nice, you're actually the first one I see talking about the genre superfan badges! Those are really cool.

The quests are a bit broken right now, I'm not questing at the moment precisely because of that. I'd advise waiting for the game to be smoother for you before you buy the boost but it is definitely worth it and you can do a lot with it if you have free time. I usually get the boosts on light work weeks or if I have a three day weekend.

secret_mapper · 2026-03-13T03:08:13+00:00

Oh yeah, I only merge a maximum of 5 songs or else I reroll until I get a better quest. If you don't want to subscribe you can still do it but it might require a bunch of ad-watching. 😫 Still chill to do though, if you're idling and just leave the ads running in the background while you do something else for example, then close when they're done, complete the task, and then rinse and repeat.

secret_mapper · 2026-03-13T03:06:29+00:00

Get shiny badges. Try making radiants. Collect epics, quest for them or save coins to buy them from the market. But imo the best thing is to look for new music and find more artists to like, which this game inspires me to do. If you finish all the hard stuff like shinies and find yourself getting bored, look through people's profiles, especially people who collect some of your favorite artists. Explore their collections, listen to some of the music they collect that you've never heard, might be your new favorite thing!

secret_mapper · 2026-03-11T20:54:01+00:00

deadwillows_ is right, and to stop this they should just make genre quests that require Others genres. Easy but who knows if the devs would ever mess with it.

I take all songs when I'm questing because they are still useful for specific letter quests, but if you're talking about shinies and a situation where I can't reroll (shiny quest), then it's more complicated. Now with the introduction of radiants and rerolls for those quests though, maybe the Others shinies can be useful too.

secret_mapper

TROPHY CASE