Tricx147 already said some of this, but here are some more details:
- Hire cheap staff with stars in Coaching (dance and music) and Production (manager).
- Wait for enough Research points to get one skill per staffer (make sure the manager skill is digital sales and the producer skill is a music genre!) to be able to release a single.
- As soon as you're able, start releasing digital singles. You can work on many at the same time (4, so each staffer works on one at a time). Put your best idol as the center.
- Once you have 5 singles (digital only is OK), do a concert. You can change the ticket price! Adjust it to as high as you can while keeping attendance at 100%.
- As soon as you're able, unlock photoshoots with your manager's Research points, and have them try to find deals.
If you've reached this point you should have enough money that you won't go bankrupt anymore.
When I have 5+ digital singles and try to do a concert, the concerts cost at least 600,000 , revenue is less than 10,000 per song, and attendance rate is less than 10% even when the tickets are free. I can't make any money doing concerts and the singles only give me 2000. The weekly cost is almost 100,000 even when I get the cheapest staff and only have the minimum. Am I just playing really badly or is there some miscalculation in my game?
When you add a song to the concert, the game seems to automatically pick whatever girl was center when you made the single. I don't know if you can change it, so I mostly had my "best" idol lead almost every single until I had a couple of successful songs. My first concert only pulled in maybe ¥300 000 profit, but a few months later I had some songs sell well enough that my second concert pulled in maybe ¥19 000 000 in profit. I'm still not quite sure how it all works.