Dishonest Tactics, or "gaming the system" on Smule

[[Member insp…]]

What are some of the dishonest tactics employed by users to gain more likes and followers etc. on Smule?

Why would anyone want to resort to such tactics?

Isn't the judgement of quality better left to unbiased, honest reviews (in the form of comments or likes), rather than trying to "game the system" to only create an "appearance" of quality?

[[Member insp…]]

Here are a few I've observed or suspected:

a) creating groups to like each others' recordings, 
b) following and unfollowing people rapidly with the hope of getting a few follow-backs, 
c) copy-pasting the same appreciative comment on multiple recordings, 
d) opening lots of "solos": duet invites where the owner doesn't sing anything allowing non-VIP users to sing the full song 
e) adding lots of underscores or zeros in front of the username in order to appear earlier in the follower and followee lists of other users. 
f) sending free gifts to lots of people just to gain visibility 
g) doing blank recordings on already uploaded songs, downloading them from an external service and re-uploading the track from their own account 
h) making groups or telling friends to upvote their upload and downvote a competing upload, thus ending up with a better rating for their upload which makes it appear earlier in search results (even if the other upload might be better in quality if decided by an unbiased audience)

[[Member _Ram…]]

On 3/6/2020 at 1:09 PM, inspired_Dev said:

Opening a new topic: dishonest tactics or "gaming the system" on Smule

There is a Young man who uploads songs and has about twenty friends. The minute I sing one of his uploads orv an invite from one of the group members, I receive about 20 likes from people I have never heard from before. I was then invited to join the Group and I did out of curiosity and the Group Rules are that all members have to like and comment on every others members singing. I told him I do not want to be part of this as numbers do not mean anything to me. I limit the number of people I follow to 100 max as I do not have the time to sing more than five songs a night. I have still managed 7500 in two years and six months

 

[[Member _Ram…]]

I am also aware of VIP members who hire school kids give them their mob phones to follow as many singers as possible for a few bucks with the hope that at least a small percentage of members will follow them in return. One Chap who sang pretty well was so full of himself that he was doing a cut and paste of the same comment to all joiners. So I tricked him. I joined his duet and did not sing a word. The next day I received this huge compliment for my singing. I told the man how pathetic he was as an individual. He said what do you mean ? I did not respond and unfollowed him straightaway. This must have bugged him a lot as after six months he messaged and asked why I had not sung a word.. I told him you should have guessed by now.

I have no clue who follows me and for what reason. I have a list of followers whom I follow besides my own list of good singers I respect and appreciate and have got to know many good people and it has been fun.

[[Member _Ram…]]

I have pleaded with Smule to create an extra Option of inviting only followers I follow so I don't have to invite followers I do not know. Imagine ladies with 10k or 20k followers they are scared to open invites as it goes to 10l or 20k followers creating mayhem. Smule Tech support Told me he thinks it is a brilliant idea and had passed it on to the Developers.. Nothing ever comes of interactions with Smule support. Smule sent an update for iPads and it screwed up the app. If we used the search facility we could not get out of the search screen without switching off the iPad and rebooting. Even now on my iPad if I use the search facility and look for a song and. say I find three, the name of the uploaders is missing. Suggesting Smule developers create the problems themselves most of the time.

[[Member open…]]

2 hours ago, _RamKrish1012 said:

Smule Tech support Told me he thinks it is a brilliant idea and had passed it on to the Developers. Nothing ever comes of interactions with Smule support. 

It’s normal though that feature requests can take years to be fulfilled—if ever. It’s not like the developers of big companies are sitting around waiting for individual email suggestions they can implement instantly. Big tech companies create road maps and set up teams tackling specific areas at a time. If invite improvements aren’t on the table currently, then everything suggested in that area will just be ignored for the time being. 

[[Member insp…]]

On 3/8/2020 at 5:04 PM, _RamKrish1012 said:

I have pleaded with Smule to create an extra Option of inviting only followers I follow so I don't have to invite followers I do not know. Imagine ladies with 10k or 20k followers they are scared to open invites as it goes to 10l or 20k followers creating mayhem.

Solution, or workaround, in the current design is: save the invite as "private", then invite friends by sending the invite link through messages (you can send bulk message to 5 people at a time if done through Smule messages). For people having a common group of friends, they can just form a group and drop the invite link in that group for all to see.

(though this point is actually off-topic since not about dishonest tactics @opentype, would be useful to create another topic for this problem around public invites)

Edited March 9, 2020 by inspired_Dev

[[Member _Ram…]]

41 minutes ago, inspired_Dev said:

Solution, or workaround, in the current design is: save the invite as "private", then invite friends by sending the invite link through messages (you can send bulk message to 5 people at a time if done through Smule messages).

Dev, Imagine you have 20K followers whom you are trying to dodge but follow 500 of them and want to invite them. Imagine how long this would take to invite Five Singers at a time, and doing it a hundred times. Any way Mate life Goes on

[[Member insp…]]

32 minutes ago, _RamKrish1012 said:

Dev, Imagine you have 20K followers whom you are trying to dodge but follow 500 of them and want to invite them. Imagine how long this would take to invite Five Singers at a time, and doing it a hundred times

Of course you are right, the workaround doesn't scale well at all! It suits only a tiny scale, say about 10 - 50.

A two-way relationship (friending) could've been better than one-way relationship (following) in this regard. Two-way indicates a mutual interest in joining each others' invites. But one-way is more useful to quickly grow the activity happening in a network, and more activity means greater number of ads served etc. so they optimized for that.

[[Member _Ram…]]

I remember in 2018 a Smule development Team went to several states in India and met with Smule singers and many of the suggestions were taken on board and implemented making life a lot more easy for example getting notifications on bookmarked invites unfortunately instead of keeping it separate they dumped it with under Notifications  and this creates a headache as you often miss genuine comments from Smule friends. If only they had created a separate Tab for Book Marked invites it would have been so much better. Now notifications is flooded even more with hundreds of  Thank you messages to all Joiners and notifications asking you to say thank you to friends who have sent you gifts.. It is asif all Smule Members are school kids. Any way we have toi live with all this if we want to sing with friends. Cheers

 

[[Member Sean…]]

So i want to address the D) category, VIP opening duets for non Vip to sing as a solo. Now most of the people that I see do it, are doing it for the same reason I do it. I spend a lot of time making and putting up songs in the song book. And often I will open a duet solo, when it's a brand new track that i've uploaded to the songbook, or if I think the track isn't being used enough. I will open my OWN track as a duet, for people to use it so that the song gets known. To be honest sometimes, i see people using awful tracks only because it's popular, and when i know I have a better track than what's being used its a way of getting it out there. Because the more people who use MY tracks, i get followers because when its get used it asks at the end if you would like to follow me. I often put up tracks in the songbook that are songs that I am not even going to sing myself, then opening it up as a duet For Solo is the only way to get it put out there and get people aware of the song. And as far as if people open up any song as a duet for a solo. I don't think theres any Deception, its like it probably Nice to have a Non Vip get to sing a solo and for that, you may gain a follower because of that. I also do it, when I wanto find NEW people that I want to follow. Sometimes I'm auditioning people when I open up solos, they don't even know thats what I may doing. And i finally to answer the reason why you can't send to just your followers. I had asked a long time ago if there was a way to send to just females or however. But from Smules point of view it doesn't make sense to allow that because the more invites out in the world of smule the more chances that a non vip uses the app and then joins. So when I sing a song and send and invite its better for Smule that my invite goes out to everyone. Better to send to 48,000 follower than 500 from their point of view. Anyway i actually use Bandlab more its 100% free, and its more like a real studio, And I still don't understand the whole point of gifts, like why would I pay money to send someone an electronic icon. i don't get it personally. 

[[Member Craz…]]

I thought I was going crazy with the free gift/cheap gift thing since I could have sworn once or twice people actually spent money on gifts (according to my "top gifters" possibly a few lol)... I can't remember or even tell what those virtual items might have been! And they usually spamming at you in a live jam so if someone actually DID spend more then a few coins, and for example you had a live jam...like most Smule notifications they get buried...you never see them...glad I don't spend the money... people can enjoy my emojis and sense of humor... 

As for blind following...it's pretty obvious who has them. I was mad about it when I felt had and joined someone who gave me some pity story when he was actually a part of the blind love group...That OC had so much blind love it ended up trending and I was mortified. This person was so excited that he/she kept harassing me to do more but I refused to follow. And almost 2 years later this user still makes the trending list. I have sang with very talented people who have a small number of followers, and some with quite a few... But followers does not define talent on a karaoke app.