Please remove check marks and advertising from the VIP experience (and other rantings 😁)

[[Member Rock…]]

The barrage of invites and ads for users who pay for checkmarks is getting out of hand. In any other circumstance, paying for an app means you no longer have to endure this stuff. Smule isn't cheap and most committed users have no interest these people. 

They can cut down their server costs by putting more restrictions on those who don't pay into it. It's aggravating to see costs supplemented by things that degrade the user experience, rather than relocating the resources towards building a better experience for musicians. 

Believe me, there are enough of us around to keep Smule in business for a long time.  

Musicians have a hard time finding each other amongst the sea of people paid to make the app look full. 

A few suggestions:

Please, please please finish the style app for Android. When you do, TELL us so we don't find out months later. (I've heard more about Rick Springfield than new features).

Please add search filters for video only & VIP only across all searches when looking for an open to join.  

Please fix and/or enhance the messaging app.

To save bandwidth, allow only VIPs to use video. Too many friends on the app have gotten surprise dongs in their joins. 

Only allow VIPs to private message each other.

Include areas for optional clickable info on a VIP user's page.  This way people can link to their social media.

Allow VIPs to copy/paste a username so they can easily @ them in a conversation. 

In conversations, please remove the character limit and allow clickable links.

There's more, but that would be a great start and somewhat easy to do from a technological standpoint.

Cheers!

-Nik

 

Edited June 17, 2021 by RockMeSlowly
Typos

[[Member Duet…]]

If you haven’t sent these suggestions to Smule support, it’s worth a try. They do take user feedback into account, at least to some degree. I am reaching maximum annoyance over the invites from Smule-run accounts, verified singers, Smule partner artists, etc. because it seems those make up the majority of invites I receive, and I have zero interest in joining them. And I know we’re not alone in this. We should be able to opt out.

And on a side note, surprise dong joins? I’ve never …

[[Member Rock…]]

13 hours ago, DuetWithAlli said:

If you haven’t sent these suggestions to Smule support, it’s worth a try. They do take user feedback into account, at least to some degree. I am reaching maximum annoyance over the invites from Smule-run accounts, verified singers, Smule partner artists, etc. because it seems those make up the majority of invites I receive, and I have zero interest in joining them. And I know we’re not alone in this. We should be able to opt out.

And on a side note, surprise dong joins? I’ve never …

I'm SO glad you've never experienced that. A friend just got one a few days ago!

I haven't sent the feedback to Smule directly, mainly because they've never responded to anything I've sent in the past. Just the fact that this is the primary fourm for people to discuss things says a lot. 

There seems to be a core ideological difference in what they want the app to be, compared to what we want the app to be. 

The shame is that they really stumbled on something that's unique and don't seem to recognize the potential.

[[Member Duet…]]

11 hours ago, RockMeSlowly said:

I'm SO glad you've never experienced that. A friend just got one a few days ago!

I haven't sent the feedback to Smule directly, mainly because they've never responded to anything I've sent in the past. Just the fact that this is the primary fourm for people to discuss things says a lot. 

There seems to be a core ideological difference in what they want the app to be, compared to what we want the app to be. 

The shame is that they really stumbled on something that's unique and don't seem to recognize the potential.

I’ve had some weird stuff, but thankfully, nothing that weird. 
 

It’s true that you may receive a generic response, we will forward your idea to the appropriate team or whatnot. But when Smule hears the same idea or complaint enough times, they are willing to make changes or reverse changes they’ve made to the app. 
 

Although I understand and believe what you’re saying, I feel that long time Smule users have led Smule in the wrong direction, for example, forcing unpopular changes to the Live Jam feature. It seems like that is when people started mass exiting Smule. So I can’t blame Smule for not wanting to listen to us on every issue. But I wish they would hehe.

[[Member Rock…]]

On 6/18/2021 at 11:59 PM, DuetWithAlli said:

I’ve had some weird stuff, but thankfully, nothing that weird. 
 

It’s true that you may receive a generic response, we will forward your idea to the appropriate team or whatnot. But when Smule hears the same idea or complaint enough times, they are willing to make changes or reverse changes they’ve made to the app. 
 

Although I understand and believe what you’re saying, I feel that long time Smule users have led Smule in the wrong direction, for example, forcing unpopular changes to the Live Jam feature. It seems like that is when people started mass exiting Smule. So I can’t blame Smule for not wanting to listen to us on every issue. But I wish they would hehe.

I think if they polled paying customers only, they'd find a bunch of things they don't want to develop. lol

I know why they made the changes to live, but restricting it to VIP only would have fixed the problem, no? Why waste the bandwidth VIPs pay for on people who don't support the system? 

To this day, they still haven't given Android users the ability to create styles or skip around songs. Plus, if I wanted to switch to iPhone, I don't get the keep my current account. 🤷‍♂️

[[Member Duet…]]

Oh I understand why they made changes to it, people doing inappropriate things on live jams … but I mean, I had someone offer and I politely declined, and he went away. I saw a lot of annoying stuff, but it was just a bunch of kids and I just ignored it. Were people really doing stuff that was harmful? I don’t know.

And I totally agree, it should have been a feature left for VIP instead of totally changing it. I don’t join groups, and so I have only gone live one time since. It’s just not the same without video.

I see they’ve finally made Style Studio available for Android users. I’m not sure, but I think you can still log in to your account if you change platforms? You would have to pay for VIP again unless you purchased it directly from the Smule website. I seem to remember someone asking about it, and then confirming that he was able to use the same account after switching to iPhone? I’ll have to see if I can find it.

[[Member cl00…]]

On 6/17/2021 at 11:06 PM, DuetWithAlli said:

I am reaching maximum annoyance over the invites from Smule-run accounts, verified singers, Smule partner artists, etc. because it seems those make up the majority of invites I receive, and I have zero interest in joining them. And I know we’re not alone in this. We should be able to opt out.

Well, I discovered that all the purple check invites are at the top of my invites, so I page down until I don't see purple to get to the people I follow and want to sing with.

[[Member Duet…]]

That’s true. Still annoying to see the same invites repeatedly. I even tried blocking their verified accounts and still received the invites! Grrrr …

[[Member Will…]]

To me the most annoying thing(which I reported to them about 2 years ago) is listing every Like you receive in the Notification tab. The tab holds a limited number of events(100 I think), then when one of your partner's share the Collab for likes, you receive a barrage of them(blind likes), filling the tab and forcing what really matters(new joins and comments) out of the list.

Likes should either be grouped, or not shown at all, because they don't really add to what we expect.

[[Member Wish…]]

Sorry to necro this thread. In looking into exactly what VIP gets you other than the ability to open songs and to add a theme to your profile, I realized that while I've been complaining about seeing all these ads and promotions, that might not be the experience for actual VIPs. 

But now I'm confused, because Smule says VIP has no ads, yet @RockMeSlowly talks about seeing ads as a VIP. Or has this been fixed since this thread first opened in 2021? Or is Smule playing fast and loose with what they consider to be an "ad"?

[[Member open…]]

You won’t see third-party “product ads” as VIP. What was being talked about was invites from selected partner artists, which Smule puts in the invite tab, even if you don’t follow these accounts. 

Personally, I never understood why this is so controversial for some users. The simple distinction “it’s ad-powered or paid—never both!“ was never true, ever since there were ads. Not for newspaper or magazines, not for TV, not for software. A pay TV channel will still tell you about upcoming shows on their channel, and Smule can still tell you about their “celebrity partner artists” you might want to join. I don’t interact with these accounts a lot, but I joined a few partner artists and treasure these duets. If Smule hadn’t pushed these invites in my list, I might never knew these artists were on Smule. So, I don’t mind these invites. I frequently check my invite list and of course don’t join most of the OCs. If I check out 30 songs from people I follow and 2 additional ones that Smule put there, that doesn’t ruin my day. 

[[Member Wish…]]

9 hours ago, opentype said:

You won’t see third-party “product ads” as VIP.

I'm not sure I even see third-party "product ads" as a non-VIP, to be honest. Any ads I see are always Smule-related.

[[Member Duet…]]

Yeah, I can’t remember what I saw as a non-vip, but I can tell you in a few days 😂 My advice is to block all official Smule accounts, and any time Smule sends you invites from new partner artists, block their accounts, too. Unless you like having invites pushed on you by Smule, which is totally ok, too. But it’s not for me.

Also, I wonder if OP knows about the new opportunities for paid checkmarks! Hehe … 

Edit: I do want to add here, that instead of pushing the invites of promotion winners (or whatever the heck it is that got these people’s invites sent out to everyone) from the official Smule account, they are pushing them from the individual singer’s accounts. Which I also find hella annoying, because this means that I still receive them despite having blocked the official Smule account. So we can try to opt out in the only possible, and Smule does THIS to get around it. But if this annoys you too, at least you can block the individual user’s accounts so that you won’t receive these invites again and again.

Edited November 26, 2023 by DuetWithAlli
Adding new info.

[[Member Duet…]]

Ok, so here’s something new. It used to be that when you scrolled down to the bottom of your 100 free recordings, it would prompt you to pay for VIP to see all of your recordings. Which was not terribly annoying. 

But now, when I scroll down my list of recordings even the slightest, I get this:

which is super annoying! Trying to annoy people into signing up for VIP? Another good move by Smule! It ain’t going to work on me, though 😂

On the plus side, I’m not seeing any ads thus far. I’ll update if that changes.

Edited November 26, 2023 by DuetWithAlli

[[Member Wish…]]

Yes @DuetWithAlli one of my friends (who had taken the update) recently mentioned it to me too. Pretty aggressive advertising they've switched to there. Just wait until they knock down the showcase spots to 50.

[[Member Duet…]]

Personally, only being able to see 100 recordings doesn’t bother me, because I generally don’t go back and re-listen to my recordings, and I have playlists for the people I sing with most often.

However, this new alert does bother me!  Not going to waste my time complaining to Smule, though. They obviously only care about what their really special people think.

[[Member Wish…]]

Yeah I don't really care about the "showcase spots" either. I actually do re-listen to alot of my recordings, but I usually just search for them, rather than scroll through my channel.

If you were to complain to Smule about it, I'm sure they'd just say "well if you become VIP, then you'll stop seeing ads about buying VIP, now won't you?" Interestingly enough, I've heard VIP people say they're now seeing pop-up ads to buy more coins. So maybe instead of Smule saying "NO ADS!" when promoting VIP, they should say "uhm...LESS ADS!"

[[Member Duet…]]

@Wishchip you’re too much 😂 that is all so true, though! And yes, I got the prompt to buy coins when I had VIP. If Smule wants people to buy coins, they need to ditch the ludicrous “News” tab and bring back the “Gifts” tab! I told Smule that all of their promotions and crap are not nearly as cool as they think; in fact, they’re quite lame. But they don’t want to hear it.

[[Member Wish…]]

@DuetWithAlli Burying gifts is the biggest question mark for me. The only thing that makes sense is it wasn't cost-effective to keep the Gift tab so front and center. Maybe most people were only giving the free gifts and it was too much useless data for Smule to bear. 

[[Member Duet…]]

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. 

Edited December 1, 2023 by DuetWithAlli