Freelance Entertainer Career, Public Release
The Freelance Entertainer mod adds an active-gig type Freelance career to the Sims 4. All active gigs are actually gigs — you perform shows at Lounges, wedding receptions, music festivals and more.
The jobs available are based somewhat on performance skills and largely on your sim’s fame. Unknown performers have to pull morning shifts, while famous players headline on the weekends. In addition to gig pay, musicians earn tips from customers and comedians earn the standard bonuses for comedy routines.
Event performance is based on the number of 1 hour sets your sim performs as well as how many sims were watching them.
While there is not a dividing line between comedians and musicians, both can do either if they have the skills, there are separate comedy shows and musical shows, since I have to set up the event scoring differently for each one. The shows available to your sim are based on both their skill (comedy or musical instruments), their union seniority, and their fame.
To join the Entertainers union (one of the freelance agencies) you need at least a skill level 2 in either comedy or a musical instrument.
Types of Gigs:
All gigs are active gigs, so you’ll be transported to the location when the time arrives.
Lounge shows. Available for all shifts for both musicians and comedians. You’ll need to be fairly famous to headline a weekend nighttime gig.
Wedding parties. Available for pianists. This is just a party at a wedding venue that you play at. Excellent tip income at these.
Outdoor Music Festivals. Available for musicians that have contracts with MusicTV (see below). Currently three available:
Burning Sim (in Oasis Springs)
Newcrest Jazz Festival (in Newcrest)
Simsplash Island Music Festival (in Sulani)
Outdoor festivals are extra long, pay very well, and present an excellent opportunity to increase fame. You need to be pretty famous to be able to get these gigs, however. They run once per week at the moment, but I’d like to find a way to schedule them once per season (looking for a way to do that).
Comedy Television Special. If you have a contract with the Comedy Channel, you can get a gig to record an hour long television special at the Movie Studio in Del Sol Valley. Also available once per week.
General gig notes:
Don’t worry about accomplishing all the goals — you can still have a successful gig without getting them all done. That being said, there are benefits for overmax performance. The more famous your sim is, the easier this will be, and they'll become more famous by playing gigs. So keep playing. :)
I set up the gigs to be moderately easy, in that you have to ‘do the work’, but you are able to let your sim take some breaks, etc. If you can manage to play two sets (1 hour each), and some social interactions, and maybe get some people watching you perform, you’ll easily get a Gold performance score most of the time.
The score on sims watching the performance is a little tricky. They need to be actively watching your performance to count. Sometimes sims will stand as though they are watching but are actually doing something else, and they may switch back and forth from watching to not watching somewhat randomly, based on their own autonomy scores. The more famous your performer is, and the busier the club is, the more sims will watch your performance. You'll often see a little musical note balloon above the head of a sim that starts watching you play or sing.
After playing a lot of gigs in a lot of different Sim gin joints, I would say that the layout of the lounge is one of the most important factors in how many sims watch your performance. If your performance space is on a different floor than the bar, fewer sims will watch you perform. Also, if customers can get to your performance space within a brief walk from the front door, without a lot of distractions in between, that works best.
Banter Interactions
Different banter interactions, where your Sim talks to the audience, are required by various gig goals. You run them by clicking on the microphone stand, and selecting an item from the Banter menu.
The success of your Banter interactions, such as 'Promote Bar Drinks', is based on your Sim's Charisma, and they count as part of your performance set.
Promote Stream provides a bonus to your stream followers, if successful, and Promote Next Show provides a bonus to Fame.
Video Recordings of Gigs
Every time you do a show, you should receive a video recording of the show afterwards. The quality of the video is based on how well you did in the gig situation. You can edit and upload these videos like any other, and have the trend tags to match either music (Guitar, Singing or Piano) or Comedy. Royalties work the same way as any other video station upload.
NOTE: The video will be placed directly in your sim's inventory, instead of in a drone, etc. You can just click on it to transfer to the video station (or open the video view on the video station and drag it in).
Syndication Contracts
If you upload a Good quality gig video, you will get an offer from either The Comedy Channel or MusicTV to syndicate your videos on television. If you accept, you'll need to upload a video at least every three days to keep the contract. With a syndication contract, you get an additional flat fee bonus for each upload, and additional followers.
Additional Features
On some of the instruments, in particular the piano/keyboard, I’ve added a ‘Play Performance Set’ interaction that shows up when you are at a gig. This causes your sim to just keep playing a particular style of music, one song after another, so that you don’t have to manually keep queuing up song interactions. The piano is the only instrument that I’ve been able to get this to work with so far.
I’ve added two new musical instruments geared toward entertainers.
Farfisa Organ. Yeah, I’m pretty old, and I’ve actually played a vintage Farfisa (with a reverb bar, no less!). It’s basically a portable pipe organ in the game, but in case you wanted to roll out some Hammond B3 vibes, this is here for you. This way, you can carry the organ to the gig, and it’s a lot smaller than a pipe organ.
Performance Microphone. This only works for singers (not comedians), but it’s a microphone with a built-in backup band. Basically, it’s a portable karaoke machine that looks like a microphone. If you have a singer entertainer, they can put on a much more entertaining show using one of these.
Rapid Roadie Service
To handle the fact that some lounges may not have all the instruments you’d want available, you can order a new instrument instantly via the Rapid Roadie Service interaction that will appear on your sim when they are on a gig. NOTE: This only appears when you are playing a gig. Also, the costs are bit higher than usual (better to plan ahead).
Finding the Festival Gigs
I have some code in there to get your sim to travel to the stage on their own at a festival gig, but they don't always listen. Just in case you take one of these jobs and can't figure out where the stage is, here are some maps to the festival grounds:
Burning Sim
Newcrest Jazz Festival
Simsplash Island Music Festival
Change Log
8/2/2023, 1.0.1b, Initial Patreon Preview
8/29/2023, 1.0.2b, Automatic video recordings of gigs, bug fixes
5/6/2024, 1.0.b3, Re-do of gig goals, lots of bug fixes
12/18/2024, 1.0.4b, fixes post-patch script error, more bug fixes
1/21/2024, 1.0.5b, bug fixes, advancement tuning, elimination of dependency of Better Bars mod
4/19/2025, 1.0.6, Public release, additional random after-work events, bug fixes
7/1/2025, 1.0.7, Patch fix for Enchanted by Nature
11/8/2025, 1.0.8, Bug fixes for contract offers, animation errors, gig difficulty tuning
2/28/2025, 1.0.9, Fix errors caused by patch changes to career IDs
As always, please let me know if you run into problems with this, as well as any suggestions (gameplay and otherwise).
Thanks for your support!
Chinese Translation by ABonnie
NOTE: The new 1.0.9 version, in order to fix the breaking changes to custom careers caused by in the Royalty and Legacy pack patch, will cause your entertainer sims to have to lose current career progress and have to choose their Agent again (Lounge Entertainers, Local 523). There's no way to avoid this due to the breaking change caused by the patch
However, most of the success in this career comes from musical skill and fame, and those won't be affected.
Comments (53)
I have been looking forward to playing with this mod, but: [cjiang] Error occurred within the tag named 'definition' (value: V) (UnavailablePackSafeResourceError). Ah! It's the "devnull_wedding_MakeWeddingToastDrink" again bc I don't have the pack 😁 (most probably). If you remember it was the same thing with other mods like the license one for example. Just so you know and in case you find a way to fix it maybe 👉🏻👈🏻 Thank you 😘
To keep the contract with tv are you supposed to upload videos in some special way or the usual way? I tried doing it the usual way, but it doesn't count, so I don't know if it's a bug or if I'm just doing something the wrong way.
Just the usual way. They need to be 'Good' quality or higher. Part of the quality is based on the score of the career event they came from, and it should be able to be improved on the video station (...I think that works? A Silver or Gold event will generate one for sure). I will look at that -- it's been a bit finicky over the years and I'll make sure it's still working correctly. Thanks for the feedback!
Hi, sorry to bother you, but would you consider changing it in a way that would make having My Wedding Stories non-obligatory for this mod to work? I put it in my game and got a last exception that mentioned UnavailablePackSafeResourceError in reasons, so after some time I figured it has to be that pack, because the mod comes with necessity of having a wedding venue for one of the gigs. I know some creators make it so if you don't have some packs, certain features just aren't visible (it this case it would be playing at weddings), but you can still use it. I tried the mod regardless of not having the pack and loved it, but I'm scared at some point it could break my game. I know it's a big ask, but I just had to try. ;) (I'm guessing making separate versions would be too much of a hassle due to frequent game updates.)
In fact, I will do that! I'm working on reducing the number of pack dependencies for all of my mods. This one depending on Wedding Stories has been a problem for many people, and at the least I can come up with substitute gigs if you don't have the pack. It shouldn't break your game. I think it's complaining specifically because the stupid champagne glass used by the 'give toast' animation lives in the Wedding Stories pack. If you don't take that gig, there shouldn't be a problem. While I don't have an ETA yet on when this will be updated to not require that pack, it shouldn't take long for me to do once I get to it. Thanks for the feedback!
Here in Spanish - https://www.patreon.com/JASimmer1/posts/166796763?utm_campaign=postshare_creator
Thanks, I'll add this and give you credit for the translation!
I've just downloaded the mod, and it's sooo good! However, I am having issues when I go to gigs: the task "perform for 1 hour" isn't ticking off even though I have been singing for 3 hours.
I just tested that, and you're right! You've found a bug. I tried it with playing the piano and singing (the Sing Song interaction on the pianos), and that worked. I'm not sure if this is a new bug or not. I will admit that I've done most of my testing the gigs while playing the piano and singing, rather than just singing at the microphone, since I like the way it sounds a lot more, lol. My bad. The Jazz songs are pretty good. The instrumental Jazz on the piano (basically bebop) is absolutely lit. I'll see what's going on with just singing. It should pick up singing as a performance that counts -- not sure why it isn't. Thanks for the feedback, and I'll get a fix posted as soon as I am able (have to figure out what's going wrong with that first...)
Hi, id really love to play your mod but somehow its not showing up in my freelance menu :(
Your sim needs to have a skill level of 2 or higher in one of the musical skills (singing, piano, guitar, etc) or Comedy before the Entertainers Union appears. Just tested it to double check. Also make sure you are using the latest version: 1.0.9 released last February. Let me know if you have any other questions or problems!
This is the best mod for an artist's career! Please don't abandon the project.
I play entertainers myself sometimes, so I will definitely keep it working! Thanks for the feedback!
Do we know yet is Freelance Entertainer is unscathed by the 124 patch?
It works for me! Just tested it after the patch.
MusicTV contract pop-up happens even after multiple gigs when I've already accepted it. Also, sometimes I'll schedule a gig that will start the same day I schedule it when it seems like its not supposed to do that. Ill get the pop-up to go to the gig and I go with her, but the gig will have half the timer gone and there's just not enough time to progress the gig, but that part might be another issues. My sim just stands around doing nothing even if I direct her to go toward the stage. This game is infuriating. Things are already effed up because of the marketplace update but I wanted to know if its normal for the multiple contracts (I accepted each one) as well as the same day gigs. I tried scheduling the sulani show that was supposed to occur the next weekend (if I recall correctly its Saturday?) on a sunday and that's when I got the popup to do the show that was halfway complete on the timer.
I'm looking into this. I think I'm missing a test before it schedules the MusicTV offer. Probably when I made it easier to get that offer -- I'll look at that. Regarding the scheduling the same day -- that can happen. I think I set the window for upcoming jobs to something like 6 hours, since I wanted to be able to schedule a gig every day. So that's normal. It shouldn't offer you jobs less than 6 hours ahead, though. I'll check that. Finally, regarding the lag/delay: That sounds like a longer term Sims 4 bug that I thought was fixed. It lags when the internal event queue gets too full. I think Turbodriver had a mod to fix it at one point, but it was no longer needed after they fixed it in game. Maybe it broke again? I don't think I've run into that again yet, but I'll keep an eye out for it. I'll take a look at the MusicTV offer bug as soon as I can. Thanks for the feedback!
https://www.patreon.com/posts/143651181?collection=1836777
Just a thought. You mentioned wanting to find a way to schedule them once per season have you considered making the event a holiday tradition?" similar to Zerbu's schedule your own festivals. That route maybe you can make it an auto populated holiday or allow the player to pick when it is. And maybe that allows players to also go to the event as a guest or an entertainer if they are invited to play. Maybe that isn't possible but thought maybe the suggestion might trigger some other thoughts.
That's a good idea! I'm also looking at making them actual open-world festivals that any sim can attend, since I was able to get that working in the Druids mod. However, getting the 'stuff' to show up (stage, vendors, etc) as a festival event is a lot tricker, since there's no automatic clean up at the end (since your sim might not even be there at the end). I'll think about the holiday event idea -- Thanks for the feedback!
Hi! will this work if I use PlumbobKingdom's Ultimate Save File? It's a save file that uses TwistedMexi's TOOL mod to place objects off lots all around the world. Would that conflict with the location of the festivals?
Hi, I have a 2 questions for this mod. 1. Is this override of EA Freelance career ? 2. Does this mod conflict with SAC Road To Fame mod ?
It's an additional Freelance career. I developed a way to inject additional freelance careers into the freelance career system (eg, the picker and related components), so it shows up with the rest of the EA freelance careers, but doesn't replace any. As far as conflicts with the SAC Road to Fame mod, I'm not sure. I think that both that mod and this one add all their functionality through script injection and not overrides, so they are probably compatible. They would use the same Fame, etc, but the jobs would be different. I have not tried it myself, however.
hey, my game wouldnt start and this mod was listed in my exception text!
I'll look into it. I have it installed and haven't noticed any problems, but I had trouble getting the latest patch yesterday. As soon as I can get the update I'll check it. Thanks for the feedback!
I love this mod! I have one issue with getting sims to watch (I know that layout in my lounges is a big problem in general, but this seems separate), but it's that the number of watchers reverses even when I get one or 2. That is, I'll have the number as one watching in the menu, and then it will revert to zero. Or two and it will revert to one and then sometimes to zero. I never get cumulative numbers, so I never reach three. What's up with losing the number?
Patreon seems to have eaten my previous reply without leaving a trace, lol. It was several paragraphs, too. Okay, trying it again: what was the fame level of the sim(s) this is happening to? It was very tricky to get it to count the number of sims watching at all fame levels, since the game's tuning changes depending on the sim's fame. In any case, it sounds like it is somehow swapping back and forth across a fame level boundary and also between the two calculation methods for how many sims are watching. If yo let me know the fame level of the sim, it would narrow it down for me to find it. Thanks for the feedback!
Hello, first of all I would like to say thank you for this mod, I have really enjoyed using it in my game, however I am getting an LE and I'm not sure what could be the issue. The "perform for one hour" task is also not getting checked off every time my sim finishes their gig even after performing the entire time nonstop. I would appreciate a little bit of guidance so I can continue to use it as it is such a great addition to the game. Thank you!
Hmm, I'm not sure as this is the first report of problems since the the last update on July 1st. I'll play one of my entertainer sims again to test it again. Thanks or the report! When are you getting an LE, eg, what is your sim trying to do? Knowing that would be helpful!
Good morning :) I do love this freelance trade a lot ! Thank you a thousand times for creating and sharing it ♥ Now, i love it so much i wanted one of my teens to use it. Do you know about msqsims "freelance for teens" mod ? It has been adopted by FrequentlyBasic that just fixed a bug in it. https://www.patreon.com/posts/133496466 Would you please allow teens to your career ? Thank you for reading me and everything ;)
Hello! I was wondering if this mod has any known conflicts, as it isn't showing up in my game at all. I do have AdeepIndigo's Entertainment Career Overhaul, if that makes a difference.
I installed the entertainment career overhaul mod and tested the Freelance Entertainer mod again. It showed up as expected, so that's probably not it. I also looked through the tuning of that mod, and there don't seem to be any obvious conflicts. Double check a few things: Your sim needs to have a comedy, singing, guitar, piano or violin skill that is level 2 or higher for it to show up. Also make sure that you are looking for it in the right place. You select the Freelance career in the FInd a Job dialog, then a few moments later it asks you what 'agency' you want to join (what type of freelance career). You should see Lounge Entertainers #523 listed. Select that to join the union and choose gigs from the Freelance gig picker. Let me know if you are still having trouble. Thanks for the feedback!
First, I wanted to say how much I have enjoyed your mods! I had a question in regard to triggering the syndication contracts. I have tried everything to unlock the advanced gigs for both Musical and Comedy gigs, with no success. I have maxed all relevant skills and fame and have completed over 20+ gigs and uploaded all of the videos. I wasn't sure if there was a requirement I was missing somewhere?
Hello, and thanks! You need to have a Gold performance event. The message at the end should say, '(simname) had some great sets today!' for the music events -- I'm not sure I included a similar notification for the comedy shows, but the rest works the same -- you need a gold performance and will end up with a Good quality performance video. The idea is that the contract offer call starts with 'I saw your show recent...' or something to that effect, so they'd know if you had a bad show and just added a bunch of effects to cover it up, lol. This gives you a base 1 in 4 chance of getting a contract offer within a day, with huge bonuses to the chance if you have over fame 3, and more if you are fame 5. I would think that if you had max fame, you should get an offer right away if you have a Gold performance event. I can usually get a Gold much easier when my sim is famous, since more of the audience watches the sim the more famous they are (that's just built into the Get Famous pack). Getting a gold event isn't super easy -- the trick is to be able to get sims to watch you perform as often as possible. The timing of when you take a break, give a required announcement is something you can control (and try to keep performing, lol). I'll try to play through this again to see if I've made it too hard, lol. I've adjusted the tuning on it several times trying to hit the sweet spot (where it isn't too hard, but still feels like an accomplishment).
Is this still compatible I received a last exception referencing this several times including the devnull_loungeentertainer or something like that. Is it safe to ignore?
Did you get that using the most recent version and on the latest game patch? If so, could you send me the lastException.txt file it would have created next to your Mods folder (one level above the mods themselves). Also if you could let me know what you were doing when it happened. As far as whether it's safe to ignore? The Better Exceptions mod isn't warning me about anything when I tested it and checked it with the latest patch, but I didn't spend the time to actually try anything in the mod yet since the patch. It's probably 'safe' in that it shouldn't corrupt your game, but I can't say whether it would get in the way of playing it yet.
Could you include violinists for wedding parties?
this is amazing! thank you so much!!
for some reason whenever i accept a gig whenever its due to start my sim doesn’t go anywhere for hours and just stays home
That's the first report I've had of that, but a couple of possibilities: Sometimes if you take a gig that is too soon (too close to the current time), like in less than an hour ahead, it may decide to schedule it for the following week. I'm pretty sure I tuned the drama nodes to avoid that, but to be safe, have you tried it with a gig that wasn't until the next day? Also, are you using any other mods that affect freelance careers? This mod is using script injection to add the career, but if another mod override the freelance tuning files, it might overwrite this one. That's probably NOT happening here, since you were able to get into the career, but another mod may get in the way somehow. Finally, while some other mods might allow this career to be used by teens, based on other reports, it doesn't seem to work correctly for them. Not sure what else it could be yet, but will think about whether anything else could be reponsible. Thanks for the report!
I got an LE Error at start the Job the First Time. http://www.simfileshare.net/download/5408748/
Is that sim currently enrolled in University? I'm seeing references in the exception trace to the university term starting and career '209984', which is 'university_CourseSlot_B'. I didn't actually test doing freelance gigs while in the University -- would be interesting to know if there was a conflict (not sure it's any different than other freelance careers, though?). If they're not enrolled in the university, then that's a real puzzler. I'll look into what 'career_start' calls in the python. I can see it in the Univ degree tracker, to start with.
The strings in other languages are completely different from English. The Simolion symbol “§” should also be displayed correctly in Pay. Currently there is only a question mark block.
I'll look at the Simoleon symbol. As for the strings, I just spot checked them, and they all seem to be there, and there are the same number in all languages. However, they are in a different order in the STBL resource. Same string IDs, but different order. I don't know why yet -- I build those automatically with a tool I put together and haven't noticed it shuffling the order before.
Is it also allowed for teenagers?
No, not currently.
Hi, this looks so cool! Which packs are required other than Get Famous, if any?
It will need Island Living for the SimSplash festival, Vampires for the organ, city living for the electronic keyboard -- I think that covers it? I should check that and add it to this post.
Will this conflict with other mods that modify the entertainer career? It looks awesome!
It shouldn't conflict with the built-in Entertainer career, since it's actually a completely new career.
This sounds so cool!!
I have been looking for more active careers , this is awesome. Look forward to any other future careers if possible :)
Wooooah! Thats sooo cool, thanks!