I tried it days ago and after hours of play, I think there's so many aspects that could be improved. I don't know if anyone already shared the same ideas, but here are mine:

- I think the relationship system has so many possibilities, not only between the producer (us) and the idol, but also between idols. For example, if Idol A has a good relationship with Idol B, when the producer does something unfair to one of them, another's relationship (or influence) with the producer will decrease, and the same thing happens if the producer does a good deed to one them. If Idol A and B has a sour relationship, the relationship (influence) will increase to one idol when the producer does something unfair to the other. Also, it's no secret that many otaku likes to see the group they like has a great chemistry with each other. It'll be great if the producer can persuade two members to appear intimate with each other and push them to please the fans, thus raising number of fans and generate more kaching.

- Merchandises. Selling CD is one of the main business of idols, but merchandises is one of the most profitable source of income for group with less members. We can buy the merchandises and sell them in concerts. I think K*irosoft's M*rch to M*llion has a good implementation of this.

- Last, but the most important thing in the industry is recording label. In reality, it's impossible to have self-produced and self-distributed CD to have one million sales. That's why recording label is important. Producer (or manager) may send proposals to recording labels in order to get time-limited contract, which can be renewed. Or if you're great enough for independent idol, proposals from recording label will arrive to you. The advantage of having a contract with recording label is they will set you a fixed budget, thus cutting some amount the expense for releasing CD. Also, it'll be awesome if label allows us to use music producer with high skills outside management and specialized in one genre for a price, resulting in a better music to cater casual audiences. Still, the advantages we get from having a contract with recording label has a high price. The way to renew the contract is by meeting certain sales and completing tasks from the label (the same way if we want to lend money from Fujimoto), and fail to do so means our contract may not be renewed. Recording label is kind of sensitive with public image too, so having too many scandal points will likely be resulted in contract termination.

Due to language barrier, my explanation isn't so detailed, I'm sorry. Hope you can put it to consideration! 

Hello.

I'm new here, but I have lots of ideas for this great game.

First one is the Singles chart.

The only reason we are interested in the data is the relationship. Maybe having the real rival teams is cool, but it means nothing just for the simulation names.
For example, how many players will glance the singles chart even when they don't produce a single in the month?
I won't, because it makes no difference to me. The rival teams are not existing. They are only series of simulation names, even the names change every month.

Instead of the original singles chart, how about focusing on the player's prodution data.
Here is the format of oricon single weekly ranking:

(Statistics Date/ Week/ Rank/ Weekly Sales/ Cumulative Sales)

For now, we released a single, and get the simplified result. How about making it more real? Not just an eventually result, but a continuity process.
Refer to the media system, we can check up the data of single sales every week, and get the profit every week.
Make a deadline for the sales, such as the fatigue of media, maybe depends on the appeal ect.

I think the continuity process always makes players excited.

Hello.

This might be difficult to change, but I think it's worth to try. :p

Experience system

Every idol gets the level cap. For example, normal idol's cap is 20, silver is 25, golden is 30, and platinum is 35. When the level is up, every attribute of idol will promote automatically. Maybe also gift some points for players to add on freely. To go a step further, we can get points to redeem the trait or cancel the negative trait.

Every idol has a random initial value, and starts with level 1. They get exp from all kinds of activities and level up with enough exp. For now, an idol can only promote their attribute by practicing in the recording studio/dance room. It's inefficiency and making no sense. For example, an idol should get better exp from the concert than the studio. All the activities should offer different exp to the idol. Photoshoot, advertisement, drama, variety show, performance, promotion ect, you know what I mean.

I've played this game over 10 rounds. Everytime I got bored with making lots of money. Yes, I can build my best group with the best idols from the nationwide auditions. Let's say, they are "platinum" idols. Do you get the point? I love my idols from the start. They don't own the great attribute, and most of them are the "normal" idol. For the currently system, it's difficult to promote their attribute to the average value. So usually the ordinary strategy is: pick the normal idols in the beginning, make enouth money, pick the platinum idols. It's like putting the cart before the horse. I think the word "produce" means you train the idols and make them better.
The experience system will make idols better, and make the "old" normal idols more useful.

Thanks for reading.

After reading through parousie's ideas, they hit on two things I'm interested in as well: Recurrency/continuous single sales. As is you release the single, and whatever it sells first week is its "total lifetime sales". I'm also interested in seeing singles continue to sell beyond their release week like actual singles in their example. It'd be an extra source of income, and could add some more decision making: Maybe an old single might sell more when its genre/dance/lyric style is trending? Maybe new genres and marketing styles could be introduced that improve longevity of single sales, or trade-off debut sales for increased sales over time. Could make copy production more involved too: You produce 300000 copies of a single, take a bit of a loss and sell 215000 singles 1st week, BUT those 85000 leftover copies can be bought over time, and you'll continue to see sales if your single had the right genre/marketing choices. On the other hand you might lowball how many copies you needed, and sell all 300000 the first week or very early on, now you can't take advantage of your song exceeding expectations and possibly selling another 50000 copies in the next few weeks, had you made that many.

Also agreed on how the game does sorta encourage you to only work with platinum idols (The new awards benefit for Best Employer pretty much ensure you'll mostly get silver/gold/plat idols), when normal ones mostly build the foundation for your company, and are the ones you attach to first and most strongly. Your highest earners and first centers are most likely normal idols, but they're objectively worse than most idols you'll draw after your first in-game year. I wish there was A) a way to disable special idols and B) following that, a way to rebalance regular idols to have strengths somewhat level to the special ones.

So I just downloaded the game after eyeballing it for a while and I have to say, I've had a really fun time with it! I'm actually not usually that into business sims, but IM has been really fun so far. I'm still getting the hang of the game, and I had a thought for something I think would really improve the early game experience.

I think it would be great if you had more input in the audition system! Or at least your very first one, since those initial idols are going to carry you until you start learning the ropes. A boost to rarer idol drop rates for that initial audition could be a good idea, but I think something that would be really cool is letting you select what attributes you want to focus on for an audition. Want to make a cool-themed idol group? Audition for cool girls! Need some good dancers? Audition for girls with 'dance' as their highest attribute!

Having more agency (huehuehue) over the types of idols you get rather than just hoping and praying you get lucky would be really useful. I also think something like an optional tutorial to walk the player through the process of getting to release their first single would be great, just to make the game more friendly to newcomers.

plastic surgery-can change Idol's appearance, Idol need a certain time of hibernation after the plastic surgery. there should be a look that only can be selected by plastic surgery option, however, there is a little chance to be changed to a funny face that the user did not select.

Hello.

Could you please add another "Auto Proposals" menu for idols version?
Refer to the "Preferred Proposals" of office manager, we can click on any preferred bussiness proposals(or none) for each idol.
It helps players to manage each idol's schedule(or stamina) efficiently.
Some idols can focus on bussiness proposals, some focus on singles, some focus on training ect.

It's another reason why we can't train our idols well.
Bussiness proposals preserve our company from bankruptcy, but we really don't need all the idols to make money all day long.
We need the "disabled list" to protect some idols from random bussiness proposals.

Please, add another "Auto Proposals" menu for idols version.

Syasin/Shashin (写真)
Refer to singles, each idol can release her own album. We receive the profit and review the sales data weekly. :p

I'm not sure if this is a suggestion or a bug report, but I noticed that if you hire a graduating idol as a staff member, they do not appear in the "graduated" list for idols. I figure they should still appear there, perhaps with a note that they were hired into the company in their bio. (It would also be cool if their mini-portrait could use their idol appearance instead of the generic staffer type, but I'm not sure if that's something that can be modified easily.)

Also, it would be interesting if idols who were dating a graduating idol (who then becomes a staffer) could continue dating. It felt funny to see "X lost mental stamina for a mysterious reason" when X's (ex-)girlfriend was her new stylist.

As a side note, I feel like this is out of scope for the intended tone and gameplay of the game, but I sort of feel like the game eventually starts to limit players who choose to maintain a low number of idols, and I feel like it would be interesting to have a mode that focuses more on a smaller group size. (Smaller max building size, less emphasis on multiple projects happening at once, etc.) The new Relaxed mode is a great help for a casual player like me to play in that manner without a game over, but a lot of features are based on much bigger groups after the first year or so. That said, I feel like my ideas would be better for a mod or a different game, so I'm not holding out hope on a small-time company mode.

Not sure if it's a bug but the events could all use a look-over to see if they're working properly, for example, that contracts don't instantly end and incur damages when an event happens (I've noticed this happening recently, just now I got the funny billboard event where I did nothing and the event said all that came of it was some minor news stories, yet my contract immediately ended and I had to pay damages?)

Tbh, I don't see the point of hiring idols as staffers. By the time I have idols start graduating, a couple years into the game, there's no point for me to hire my idol to become a low-level staffer when I already have 100 million yen and all of my staffers are 10-stars. Is there something I'm missing, or something new that's been added recently? (Sorry for my ignorance if so!) 

Thanks for the great game!

Here's an idea for more of the Mod side of the game. If possible, I would like to have an option in "params.json" of the IdolPortraits to have an option like "fixed_firstname" / "fixed_lastname",  or likewise; so that, instead of fetching for the pool of first and last names for a random name, it instead uses the fixed value. It would greatly help for mods that have established names for a certain image!