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Watch trailer on Steam ↗CD Market - Music Label Sim
Lost Star Games · Published by Lost Star Games
Very Positive — 96% positive (135 reviews) · 25 achievements
Last updated 28 Sept 2026
CD Market is a music industry management sim where you build a record label on your own terms, from vinyl to digital. Stay small, or grow into something bigger. Discover artists, shape careers, and survive decades of changing formats, trends, rivals, and crises.
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Price history
Simulation, Strategy · 2026 · More £5 - £15 games
About this game
CD Market is a music label management game about taking a small record label through decades of music history.
You sign artists, shape their careers, release records, send them on tour, chase charts, and try to keep the whole thing from collapsing when the industry changes around you.
Some weeks are simple: a single sells well, a tour date goes smoothly, a new artist looks promising. Other weeks, a band is falling apart, a legal case lands on your desk, piracy eats into sales, a rival label makes an offer to your biggest act, and your next album still is not ready.
That is the job. Build the label anyway.
Start Anywhere From 1950 To 2020
Starting in the 1950s means dealing with a world built around physical formats, regional distribution, and record stores. Start later and the business has already changed. CDs rise, piracy appears, digital platforms arrive, and the comfortable old ways of selling music become harder to rely on.
You can keep playing beyond 2020 and see how long your label can survive.
Sign Artists And Manage Their Careers
Scout new artists through your A&R department, negotiate contracts, pay advances, set royalties, renew deals, and decide who deserves a long-term place on your roster.
Artists are not just sales machines. They have creative energy, stress, boredom, happiness, chemistry, traits, and problems of their own. A talented band can still burn out, fall apart, lose a key member, or become difficult to manage at the worst possible time.
Make The Music Before You Sell It
A release starts before the release screen.
Set the creative direction for a project, choose the style and theme, book demo sessions, hire writers and producers, record songs, and decide what should become a single, album, EP, promo single, compilation, greatest hits release, or special edition.
You can release music in different regions and formats, including Vinyl, Cassette, CD, and Digital. Each era changes what makes sense, what sells, and what risks you are taking.
Promote The Release
A great song can still disappear if nobody hears it.
Run marketing campaigns, schedule PR events, send music to radio, create videos for TV, build hype before an album, and grow artist recognition across different regions. You may also get offers for commercial placements, collaborations, award-show performances, or other opportunities that can help a release take off.
Tour, Sell Merch, Or Build A Festival Legacy
After an album, send the artist out into the world.
Choose venues, set ticket prices, plan dates, build setlists, add supporting artists, manage travel and amenities, rehearse, and watch each show affect reputation, stress, ticket sales, and future demand.
You can also create merch sets, work with suppliers, order stock, set prices, and turn fan excitement into another part of your label’s income.
As your label grows, festivals become part of its identity. Get your artists onto festival lineups, or create your own festival, book the venue, set the schedule, invite label and global artists, manage budgets, and try to turn a risky event into a name fans remember.
Survive The Industry
The music business does not stay still.
Global charts move every week. New styles appear. Rival labels grow. Artists retire, get poached, or become famous enough to demand better terms. Awards can raise your profile. Legal cases can drain your cash. Piracy can destroy sales if you ignore it for too long.
Build departments, hire better employees, bring in executives, run anti-piracy campaigns, settle or fight lawsuits, and make the kind of decisions that decide whether your label becomes a legend or a warning story.
Grow Into Something Bigger... And Delegate The Chaos
If your label becomes successful enough, the business expands beyond signing artists and releasing albums.
You can build your own studio, move into better offices, hire executives, open distribution centers, run your own record stores, buy radio stations, make distribution deals with rival labels, and even acquire other labels.
As the company grows, you can start delegating some of the chaos. Marketing executives can run ongoing PR work for your artists. HR executives can recruit and manage department staffing. Tour executives give you better forecasts before you risk money on the road. Distribution executives help with retail infrastructure, store costs, and rival-label deals.
You can also hire release executives to help manage an artist’s album cycle. They can plan demos, schedule recordings, prepare singles, build release drafts, and wait for your final approval before anything goes out.
By then, your label is not just surviving the industry anymore. It is part of what shapes it.
Explore The Game In Sandbox Mode
If you want less pressure, or just want to experiment, Sandbox mode lets you bend the game around your own ideas.
Edit your label’s cash, recognition, genre popularity, release settings, ticket price limits, manufacturing costs, employee setup, and more. You can also create and edit artists, adjust members, change traits, boost happiness, fix chemistry, or set up the exact roster you want to play with.
Use it to test strategies, build a dream label, skip the early struggle, recreate a specific music scene, or just make the numbers do something ridiculous and see what happens.
Features
Start in any year from 1950 to 2020 and continue endlessly
Manage a record label through vinyl, cassette, CD, piracy, and digital eras
Scout artists, solo members, and future stars through A&R
Negotiate contracts, advances, royalties, renewals, and EP deals
Manage artist happiness, chemistry, stress, boredom, burnout, addiction, and band drama
Create demos, record songs, choose writers and producers, and build full album projects
Release singles, albums, EPs, compilations, greatest hits, promo singles, and special editions
Choose formats, regions, prices, publishers, marketing budgets, and distribution options
Track sales, profit, certifications, piracy impact, chart positions, and regional recognition
Run PR events, marketing campaigns, radio promotion, TV exposure, and commercial deals
Plan tours with venues, ticket prices, setlists, support acts, travel, amenities, and show ratings
Create merch sets, manage suppliers, order stock, and sell to fans
Compete for awards and perform at major ceremonies
Create your own festivals and invite label or global artists
Handle legal cases, settlements, court outcomes, and anti-piracy campaigns
Compete with rival labels, counter their offers, sign global artists, or acquire subsidiaries
Build distribution centers, open record stores, and make deals with other labels
Buy radio stations and strengthen your control over promotion
Use Sandbox mode to edit your label, artists, money, recognition, and more
Create or import custom music templates with different genres, styles, regions, stores, publishers, and radio stations
Unlock achievements across sales, tours, awards, formats, legal cases, stores, and digital music
It is about watching a label history grow one choice at a time. The first scouted artist. The risky single that worked. The expensive tour that did not. The band that almost broke up. The album that kept the company alive. The rival that took your star. The comeback you had to build from whatever was left.
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 (64-bit)
- Processor: Intel Core i3 / AMD Ryzen 3 (or equivalent)
- Memory: 4096 MB RAM
- Graphics: Integrated Graphics (Intel HD 4000 or equivalent)
- Storage: 1000 MB available space
- Sound Card: Any
- VR Support: None
Recommended
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
Supported Languages
Latest news
Patch NotesOfficial
More Automations - CD Market Update v1.2.0
Update notes: Merch executive: you can now automate merch releases. You are able to assign artists to a merch executive which will create merch sets automatically after each release Merch suppliers now work differently, instead of being based on industry recognition. You can now access all of them BUT the prices they offer will lower with the more quantity you order. So you will have to bet on your artists on selling big quantities and save some $ or take a miss and lose $ Many UI changes, including a different display of stars, better scouting filters modal (includes the fix to the bug where regions were not visible), etc. Demo session artists selector now shows if they are unavailable and the reason why Auto-select buttons added to tours, you can now get help from the tour executive on selecting tour dates. Also added more info in date selection screen. Including cost per seat, forecast and other data Bigger venues will now cost more per seat. So they make more sense when you need to fit big crowds. Own stores, "request deal" is not a thing anymore, they are done automatically by the distribution executive, which according to his rating, and your stores market share, will improve deals as time passes by You are now able to renegotiate store deals, you will set an expiration date for the deal and a % of how much they take from each sale. Deals can be improved the more sales you got, as they respect you more. Bug: fixed the low stock on merch as it fired when it was not actually zero Merch selector now displays unavailable artists and the reason why, so you can know what's going on New release screen now shows singles before album, as the most common case is single, like, 4 singles, 1 promo, 1 album, you need 5 releases of singles vs 1 album. So the default option for a new release is now singles Contract royalties now start around the middle, so it's easier to set them up, instead of starting on default values (something like what I did with release prices) Marketi...Read full article on Community Announcements (Lost Star Games)Patch NotesOfficial
Steam Cloud Saves - CD Market Update v1.1.0
Update notes: - NEW: Steam cloud saves. Share saves between different devices- Compilations/Greatest hits: CD 1/2 wording changed to whatever format is available, so for example it will say Vinyl 1/2 instead- Multiple recording sessions at the same time (per artist) are not possible anymore.- Added more reviews texts for release days. And did some small fixes on them (talking about plural when it was one song..)- Auto hospitality checkbox in artists screen (next to notify me when). This automatically improves the assistant and security budget.- Rotate degrees in logo editor is now an number input (instead of defined values)- Scouting filters now include age and gender. More specific searches take longer to complete- Style popularity now shows in scouting screen per artist- UI scaling max is now 250%- View executives in office screen- To unblock Release executives, it's 2.5 stars of industry recognition now, reduced from 4 stars- Display release executives in Music Production screen- Release executive salary added to album costs- Bug: issue with manufacturers on sandbox mode- Bug: changing the name of the song didn't reflect in videoclips selection- Bug: fixed phases when getting an artist from a rival label. - Bug: there were cases where solo TV shows had bands on them- Bug: fixed artists touring and release executives working on recording sessions at the same timeRead full article on Community Announcements (Lost Star Games)Patch NotesOfficial
CD Market Update v1.0.34
- Redesign of release screen, added costs of release with more detail. You can also see linked releases (singles, promo singles in case of an album and for a single you can see the parent album)- Show 12 weeks of sales instead of 6 in release screen- Marketing section in a release now shows past releases and you can analyze them by paying 10% of the campaign. Could be useful to see how much effect it had.- Default name for merch and tours in case you are speedrunning- More song and artist names, apart from DJs, solo names, institutions, etc, more names in everything. So you should see more variety now- Global tab now shows always, so it avoids the "where are the global charts" question. It will generate after a month though, that's the same.- More details to tour finances added, should be clearer now, check TOUR FINANCES toggle in tour view to see more detailed info!- Tour enhancements are more powerful- Reduced addictions chance by 20%- Show summary table of profit per unit in release review- Reduced a lot the amount of accountants needed as there were a lot of complains about tax filings, and also added the capacity they have in Office screen -> Accounting deparment- Reduced a bit the talent scout contact, the artist he gets to you- Default max tour ticket price increased overall. in 1990 from $40 to $50 for example - Custom photo for label logo- Radio was overpowered, so I nerfed it and buffed TV recognition gains (they still only make gains on artist origin's region)- Bug: fixed new artist award, it was actually bugged and you couldn't get awarded by it- Bug: double mail of tours started- Bug: now you can select songs in automation draft. In case it exceeded format length as it was reported by an user- Bug: fixed a case where editions were not given a format- Bug: Marketing was not being correctly adjusted to 50/60s- Bug: when updating a name in template, in other tabs it kept looking like before - Bug: Fixed Display format sales correctly, include editions so t...Read full article on Community Announcements (Lost Star Games)Patch NotesOfficial
Balance Changes - CD Market Update v1.0.33
Update notes: - BIG changes to prices. Specially in early decades. There was something wrong structurally. Prices of formats were not being represented as they should on sales. This could affect greatly the balance.Release prices / manufacturer / merch prices adjusted for 50s / 60s, they were not scaled correctly. 50s and 60s were a late feature before release so I'm still working them out.- Default prices of releases and tours are the mid range now, instead of the default $10- Improved GREATLY the performance on big saves- Added more explanations in tutorial for distribution and added scouting filters to it too- Fixed a bug with tutorial where you got stuck- Remove terminated artists from TV opportunities- Removed seasonal events from EPs as they were not being used, seasonal events are only for albums- Refactored marketing executives, now they have certain capacity limits with indicators on assigned employees and efficiency- Own Festivals now say that sales are when the festival ends, as people were getting confused that they didn't generate sales- Removed 1 year limit (from album) for merch, now it works like tours- Reduced sample chance by A LOT from 1950 to 1970, it will grow from 0% chance to 100% from 1950 to 1970. This of course is over the value set on that style. Samples were not used at those times and it seemed pretty weird to have them early on genres/styles.- Chill mode now makes a "pause". If a TV participation or a festival comes after, they don't get canceled, you can go back to normal before the festival and the artist will do it. This was only applied to festivals and TV.- Party contacts now say what they do before you try to talk with them (idk why I didn't do this after all this time...)- Select top X next to Select all button. Basically you can select a quantity of songs instead of all of them- Contract status in artist card. Albums, singles, promo singles- PR events tab that shows past events. IMPORTANT, now the PR events are hidden by default...Read full article on Community Announcements (Lost Star Games)Patch NotesOfficial
New Tutorial - CD Market Update v1.0.32
An interactive tutorial has been included on the game to explain basic concepts of it. Hope it helps out to new players. Update notes:NEW Interactive tutorialSome translation errors have been fixedPrices for releases and tours now start with a recommended price by defaultHorizontal bar now displays on mac due to reported issues from players to use itExtra preset buttons in setlist to select songs fasterBug: Fixed Marketing for greatest hits and compilations, it's now displaying correctly (in final review step)Display solo members ageRead full article on Community Announcements (Lost Star Games)
