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Here’s your response from Smule Support: Hi, thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with us! We're excited to have a passionate community that’s willing to provide feedback. We will continue to ensure Smule remains the best place to create music with friends and family!

When looking at the list of joins on my OC, my name is listed first instead of the joiners. Since only a few characters are displayed, it is not helpful😟

In the US it’s $5 for 3 months so I figured, what the heck 😀 I’m guessing they’ll give an option to renew at the end of that time and I’ll likely not renew. But I’m finding that a lot of those who’ve gotten a tick aren’t necessarily talented singers. Although I will say most don’t suck, which is a low bar😁 This was supposed to identify good singers who engage well with the community.

No, I have not purchased it and I have no plans. I also have not met the special requirements and I never will. I am not giving Smule, Meta, or X anymore personal information than I have to. Heavens, it is pricey for those of us who have to pay for it and not everyone has to pay… I saw a user who stated on their profile “I did not buy this checkmark.” And, open type, as you stated previously, it is an option. But if I have to buy a checkmark for someone to sing with me, then they have the option not to sing with me, and that’s okay with me. I thought this was a funny incident. I had two users who used to follow me and I noticed they unfollowed me. I saw their checkmarks. I laughed and unfollowed the golden boys and girls. Seems there is pretentiousness attached to the costly mark. Whatever…

So, has anyone from here bought it? I wonder what happens after that purchase screen shown above. Is there any actual verification done? It’s also weird to make it a one-time purchase for 1 or 3 months. If Smule “verifies” that I am real, that already expires a month later? And the people who do like it need to manually purchase that badge at least four times a year? It’s a strange offer.

correct.. very well said..

correct... I can see almost everyone from my active followers are on Gold Badge..

Smule is just an app, made better when there are good singers who can hold a tune and enhance the tune. So I don't worry too much about likes/followers/listeners and the lack of all the above. Just remind yourself it's karaoke on a phone- sing and do just that.

Oh! Lol! That could be it. Well, in your face, Smule! I’m still sending the free ones. I figured they need the News tab because people just aren’t seeing Smule promotions, contests, and artist duet opportunities.

Just bragging rights.. for now. However there’s clear benefits for smule😁 Let’s sat a million people accepted it, they made a cool $5–10 million off it in a few days. For nothing other than putting a tick next to your dp.

I updated Smule today and I received the offer for the Gold Badge... Wow AU$32.00 a year. What are the benefits to have this Gold Badge?

14 days is too long. They need to fix their bugs first. A new bug has just been introduced which can make it impossible to see who has joined you when you look at all joins, because you see your own name + joiner. Why do you need to see your own name there, these are all people who’ve joined you! This was fixed several months back and now the bug is back. And then in playlists, they don’t put the name of the singers next to a song so how do you find a collab you want to play?

But X and FB give it to whoever pays.. smule is selective about who it offers this badge. Looks like no more than about 1% of people are getting the offer, don’t know if this is a good or bad thing, time will tell.

How the offer looks in the app:

If you don't mind sharing, did you have to pay for it and how much was it? TIA.

Well, Smule isn’t a charity. They are a tech startup company. The service was created with over 200 million in investor’s money and those investors want their money back with interest eventually. A typical way to achieve that is to constantly raise prices for the service. Another option is upselling – giving people options to pay more. Given the two choices, I am totally happy that my VIP price has remained unchanged and I am not forced to pay more. If there is optional paid stickers, optional paid OC extensions, optional paid badges … that’s all fine with me, because I am not forced to buy any of that.

When does the app ever tell the whole truth? Seldom. They humor the hell out of users when it comes to money. I’ll pay to sing at a reasonable cost and I’ll purchase a few gifts for friends on occasion, but I refuse to pay to extend invitations. Stop the greed, Smule! I’ve always felt that Smule maybe has the attitude that its users should be thankful that they allow us to use their platform. No, we are the bosses of the accounts that we purchase, as long as we abide by the guidelines. Smule should be thanking us for choosing their company. There are other karaoke apps … but I think Smule’s technology and their awesome, unpaid user uploaders keep the app above the rest … for now.

It could be one of those things, maybe she shared it to a group or support chat, or sent it through messages asking for people to like it. There are also users who randomly like a bunch of recordings on their friends’ pages, hoping to get a bunch of likes in return. Only people who participate in these things understand the purpose of doing it, because I sure don’t. I also somehow had one of my recordings make it onto a Smule playlist (don’t even remember how I found out) and that’s why it got so many plays. Congrats on your #1 single! Hehe

Yes, gold badges are actually showing up on the non-updated app as the old retired purple badge. There's no apparent relationship between the two (aside from some fun theories), so Smule shouldn't have had that confusion.

Actually I just needed to refresh my app and update it. I do have a gold badge now and all the purple badges I saw were actually gold.

Well, it is nice that you can think like that hehe. Maybe I’m too cynical. But I’m going by my experiences with people on Smule. And personally, I have to squeeze in listening to my own joins and collabs while doing housework, so I honestly don’t listen to collabs if I’m not part of them. I might buy that notion if it was one random person who really likes me, but is too afraid to actually interact me. But several? I’m just not buying it. Oh, and I had another thought on this. Even though they appear to be real accounts, I’m not sure how it is possible for them to see my recordings, much less listen and like them, since Smule changed the block feature. Now if I have an account blocked, wouldn’t that user only be able to see my recordings on the website? But to like my recordings, wouldn’t they have to be logged in? So I’m questioning how any of this is even possible. It’s too time consuming to dig deeper into the accounts, which is why I simply block them rather than being annoyed by their activities on my account.

So the latest blog on verification talks about a gold checkmark, yet suddenly more of my followers/friends are appearing with purple checkmarks. How did they get it? Where is the information on this? The blog about the gold checkmark said it won’t make all the criteria public but mentioned age of the smule profile for one. Do I need to update my app to get this feature or what? My profile is from 2017. Lol

I've only been uploading songs for about a year now on Smule, so please forgive my ignorance on these issues. I had uploaded a song last year and just noticed that there is now a vocal guide attached to it. I have no idea how to attach vocal guides to songs, so I'm not sure how this one is now there. Was another user able to upload it and attach it to the song? The problem is...it's not a really good vocal guide in my opinion, and it actually might explain the lower score the song has been getting in recent months. I'm currently trying to find a way to remove the vocal guide and would appreciate any help in doing this. The other thing with this particular upload - I have no idea if this is related or not - but I'm unable to update the song in any way. Whenever I try, I get this Oops! message. So even if I figure out how to remove the vocal guide, I'm not sure it'll even let me.

This golden checkmark also is likely just another way for Smule to obtain more personal information on its users, which they can then sell to the big marketers. So those who pay for this feature are getting suckered in two ways: You’re paying and Smule is laughing all the way to the bank. And what about those secret requirements? They are to create the illusion of exclusivity. Ha! This is my opinion, and I will not be falling for it…

The Smule blog post about the checkmarks doesn’t mention any functional benefits. But that could easily change later. Smule seems to copy what X and Meta (Facebook/Instagram) are doing. They now all have these paid badges/memberships disguised as “verification”.