SongPop Scoring Formula

SongPop is my current social gaming obsession, so after several close losses, I had to find out how the damn scoring worked to put my mind to rest. See, I could tell streaks of correct answers were vital to a high score, but it didn't make sense to me that I could beat someone on 4/5 songs and then lose on the last one. Here is the answer I found on the SongPop website:

Each question is awarded a score based on time and how many consecutive answers you have in your streak. It is completely independent of times on previous questions

Score = (11 - Time) * 100 * (11 - Time) ^ ((Streak-1)/4)

That is basically a Base Score times a Multiplier:

Base Score = (11 - Time) * 100 Multiplier = (11 - Time) ^ ((Streak-1)/4)

So the Multipliers become:

1st correct: 1 2nd correct: (11 - Time) ^ 0.25 3rd correct: (11 - Time) ^ 0.5 4th correct: (11 - Time) ^ 0.75 5th correct: (11 - Time)

So for a typical 2 second time, the multipliers are: 1.0, 1.7, 3.0, 5.2 & 9.0

From there you can make some conclusions that explain all of the strange scoring:

- a single streak of 3 (1+1.7+3=5.7x) is better than 2 streaks of 2 (1+1.7 + 1+1.7=5.4x)

- total time doesn't matter because later questions count for more ... time for the last question (9.0x) counts for almost as much for the previous 4 combined (1+1.7+3+5.2 = 12.9x)

- time matters for really large scores:

0.1 sec per question = 25,088 points (max possible score ???) 0.8 sec per question = 22,326 points (needed for 22,000 achievement) 1.4 sec per question = 20,075 points (for 20,000 achievement) 2 sec = 17935 3 sec = 14613 4 sec = 11603 5 sec = 8908 10 sec = 500 points !!!!

Now it is all clear. Streaks are more important than the individual times on single songs. If you're going to worry about time, only worry on the last song. Focus on getting the first four songs right and then try to be fast on the last one to steal the challenge from your opponent.

If you'd like to play SongPop and need a partner, you can find me as user nerddotis in the game.