What does everyone think about the new Update?

[[Member real…]]

4 more reviews that came in the last couple days on the Apple App Store. All of these are bringing up great points, and they're coming from people who've been using the app a long time.

Review: "I have been on Smule since you
released in 2012"

As a professional musician I just need to
say all the new updates since I started on
this app in 2012? ABSOLUTELY
HORRIBLE! It's gone from a wonderful app
to just……horrible…Why couldn't you just
leave it the heck alone?
You used to be able to adjust effects and
pretty much mix down your recordings.
Now you can't and it all is just tinny and
crappy sounding. I pay for this annually
and always have but you have ruined it so
much with all the updates that this will be
the last year that I pay for this.

Review: "Account showcase"

I don't like The New look. It does not show
the details of collabs clearly. It's very
confusing to look at and the point of
showcasing each songs in the account is
defeated. Please bring back the old look &
the "Pinned Song" too. Thanks!

Review: "Please bring back old layout"

The new updates seem absolutely
unnecessary. It has made my experience
more troublesome and not more enjoyable.
What is the purpose of having the huge
thumbnail picture on our profiles of songs?
It takes up so much space and you can't
even see who joined the song as we were
able to before until clicking it, which is a
inconvenience. I feel like I'm scrolling
forever to get to songs I may want to listen
to now and I can't even see who the
recording is with because it's just a huge
photo which doesn't make any sense to
me! All of the tabs, favorites, invites,
they're all catered to trying to look like
Apple Music library where you've catered
to the cover photo more than the actual
recording and who you may have sung
with. I am flabbergasted with this update
Please, please, please change it to what it
was before. Also what is the point of
having every single song be auto play on
our news feed? What if we are in public
and some very profane content just starts
playing that I didn't ask to listen to? It's not
even considering that. I'd like to hit play on
the songs I'm interested in on my news

feed. Thanks. I've been a faithful VIP user
for years but I don't think it's fair to pay for
updates that make my experience less
enjoyable. Please consider changing it
back to the previous layout. Thank you.

Review: "Please"

Please change the profile layout back to
how it used to be. Changes should make
the experience better not worse.

Review: "Suggestions"

Should be more like a regular music app with playlists, etc. I'm sure I'm not the onlyone that likes listening to my recordings and that of my friends. I listen to it like regular music so I should have all the options regular music apps have.

[[Member musi…]]

Yay, the old format is back

[[Member Toot…]]

Soooo happy the old list format is back!!!! Let‘s hope it‘snot only temporarily and a bug? 😱

[[Member Glen…]]

Much better now

[[Member Kayj…]]

Hallelujah! YEESSSS! Thank you! THANK YOU SMULE! 😁 

[[Member real…]]

A sight for sore eyes😀 Somehow they've done it without a new version of the app!

[[Member Isa_…]]

2 minutes ago, realyquick said:

A sight for sore eyes😀 Somehow they've done it without a new version of the app!

Thanks @realyquick ... you are one of the persons who pushed it through to happen ... 🙏🙏

[[Member Isa_…]]

Yayyyy... its more easier to scroll down to check for invites and most importantly are the small faces on  the cover of the song.. 🤣🤣

[[Member duoj…]]

Just curious for those who got rolled back - are you all on iOS devices? I updated my app on my android phone yesterday, and it didn't roll back, nor do I have the "Rewind and forward" feature for the lyrics while recording. I had to actually find an old APK and install it to get back to the old profile. However, it's awesome to see the old profile again! 🥳

 

[[Member Isa_…]]

1 minute ago, duojet24 said:

Just curious for those who got rolled back - are you all on iOS devices? I updated my app on my android phone yesterday, and it didn't roll back, nor do I have the "Rewind and forward" feature for the lyrics while recording. I had to actually find an old APK and install it to get back to the old profile. However, it's awesome to see the old profile again! 🥳

 

Mine is iOS..

[[Member duoj…]]

1 minute ago, Isa_Bella said:

Mine is iOS..

Ah I see. Thanks! Oddly enough, when I updated my iPad, it rolled back, but a few of my friends with iPhones updated and still show the new profile. Odd.

[[Member Duet…]]

Wow! I came here just to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me! I still can’t believe it. 

[[Member Isa_…]]

1 minute ago, duojet24 said:

Ah I see. Thanks! Oddly enough, when I updated my iPad, it rolled back, but a few of my friends with iPhones updated and still show the new profile. Odd.

power off and on.. 

[[Member Rita…]]

7 minutes ago, duojet24 said:

Just curious for those who got rolled back - are you all on iOS devices? I updated my app on my android phone yesterday, and it didn't roll back, nor do I have the "Rewind and forward" feature for the lyrics while recording. I had to actually find an old APK and install it to get back to the old profile. However, it's awesome to see the old profile again! 🥳

 

I have android and mine went back to the old version...So happy to have it back. HALLELUJAH!!

[[Member real…]]

2 hours ago, Isa_Bella said:

Thanks @realyquick ... you are one of the persons who pushed it through to happen ... 🙏🙏

Thanks, I think they finally listened to all of us who were equally frustrated with that clunky layout😄

[[Member real…]]

50 minutes ago, duojet24 said:

Just curious for those who got rolled back - are you all on iOS devices? I updated my app on my android phone yesterday, and it didn't roll back, nor do I have the "Rewind and forward" feature for the lyrics while recording. I had to actually find an old APK and install it to get back to the old profile. However, it's awesome to see the old profile again! 🥳

 

Again, an app update is not required.. they've modified the layout from their server, rather than the app. If you don't see the change back to the old version, just kill the app and re-open it.. that's what I did after I noticed there wasn't a new update available, and lo and behold the good old layout came back.

It's quite interesting that rolling back to an old app achieves the same thing. They are able to change the UI either from the server or the client, which isn't normal. I wonder how they've architected this thing.

In general best practice is to keep apps updated because there can be issues with using a very outdated app. There can be bugs in old versions that affect the performance of the phone, or security issues, etc.

[[Member sdr…]]

I didn't do anything on one of the android phones I have and the old profile is back on it this morning.😁 Hope it's for real 😛😂

[[Member My2C…]]

Glad to know they have rolled out the feature of rewind and forward for android.

[[Member duoj…]]

2 hours ago, realyquick said:

It's quite interesting that rolling back to an old app achieves the same thing. They are able to change the UI either from the server or the client, which isn't normal. I wonder how they've architected this thing.

That is odd. Though just to be sure, I just re-installed the version from Google Play, and it showed up as the new profile again. So back to the November '21 version for me. LOL.

Something else odd happened was when I was recording a group collab pretty recently. I have a second account that's not VIP that I use for group collabs. My current VIP account showed the new profile. But when I deleted and re-installed the app and logged in to my non-VIP account, it showed the old profile. When it was time to log back in to my VIP account, the new profile showed up again. I have no idea how that was happening since it was the same device.

22 minutes ago, My2CentsWorth said:

Glad to know they have rolled out the feature of rewind and forward for android.

Sadly, I'm still not able to do this even with the most recent update. I'm not sure how some android devices have the abilit and some don't, much like the new / old profile. I did notice that on my old Pixel phone, I had something in my settings screen that said something to the effect of "This app has been Superpowered" - which is some kind of audio development platform. My Samsung doesn't show that anymore, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it. I'm just happy to have my old profile back. 😆

[[Member My2C…]]

39 minutes ago, duojet24 said:

That is odd. Though just to be sure, I just re-installed the version from Google Play, and it showed up as the new profile again. So back to the November '21 version for me. LOL.

 

I had to try it out myself and updated the app, and lo and behold, I got the new layout again. 

Learn from me guys - DO NOT UPDATE APP if you want the old interface. 

[[Member Duet…]]

On 3/10/2022 at 9:14 AM, realyquick said:

They changed over to the new look last year, but very recently they've made changes that made even old versions show an incomplete version of the new look - forcing those of us who had a working older version go through with the update so the app was usable. This is why you're seeing a new wave of complaints against the new layout 😄

Everyone I know, young and old, hates the new layout and all the other changes that broke stuff that used to work well before.

I think the problem is that these changes are being designed by someone who's a musician but doesn't sing, and is being coded by a team that are neither musicians nor singers - they're just programmers doing what they think they were told to do. This disconnect results in all the bizarre updates over the last year or so which makes the app progressively worse while steeply raising subscription fees. Many smule users have quit rather than pay this new team to break their favorite app.

Thank you for the additional info. Now it makes sense why they’ve changed it back after all this time. It actually pisses me off even more because if Smule had just listened to those of us who told them we hated the update in the first place, so many people wouldn’t have quit singing or dropped their vip. It’s still nice to see the old layout anyway.

[[Member Kayj…]]

17 hours ago, duojet24 said:

Just curious for those who got rolled back - are you all on iOS devices? I updated my app on my android phone yesterday, and it didn't roll back, nor do I have the "Rewind and forward" feature for the lyrics while recording. I had to actually find an old APK and install it to get back to the old profile. However, it's awesome to see the old profile again! 🥳

 

I am iOS, but some said they turned their phone off and back on and then the old version was back? 

[[Member real…]]

1 hour ago, Kayjan said:

I am iOS, but some said they turned their phone off and back on and then the old version was back? 

Right, you could just kill the app (pull it up off the screen) and re-launch it, and the old layout will come back. The app knows how to display either the old or new format; the server tells it which one. This is why the app doesn't need to be updated.. the server seems to be telling the app which of the two formats to display, and they updated the server yesterday to have the app display the old format by default. I'm guessing in a future release they'll just put it in the settings - use list or picture layout.

There are people with really old versions of the app which know only how to display the old format, I think @sdr said he has such a version. In such cases, the server can't make the app display the new layout because the app is so old, it doesn't know how to do that. There are disadvantages to holding on to an old version of an app.. after a few updates of the operating system, that app might eventually start crashing or doing other bad stuff, as well as missing any new features.

[[Member Isa_…]]

4 hours ago, Kayjan said:

I am iOS, but some said they turned their phone off and back on and then the old version was back? 

That's what I did and I'am enjoying the old layout easy to managed.

[[Member _Joe…]]

I wrote to them when the bad changes came and they answered very kindly. Now I see the old way is again with us. It’s better in this way. Unfortunately they roll back the only feature that was ok: when you put your open call in favourites you can see all your joins and not only your open call track. But it’s ok, it’s better that they don’t touch too much the app.