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Invite Listing no longer shows expired (older than 7 days) Invites

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Glasnost77

So for the last few days I was not able to search OCs properly and today realised that -Smule made changes in the App, now if I search for all Invites for a particular song (Using Search by song name, then Selecting an Arrangement, press Sing button then press Join button), it only shows Invites of the past 7 days, whereas earlier it used to show all past Invites (have joined OCs from 2018 also in this method). Further, if for any arrangement the last recorded Invite was older than 7 days, then the Join button is greyed out, as if no Invite was ever made for that song !

One can still look up past Invites by using the Search by song name and then in the Recordings list older OCs are shown, but this is hardly useful as the list is for all Arrangements and mixed up with collabs.

This seems to be retrograde and taking a step back. I know long back Invites could no longer be joined after expiry (1 week) and sometime ago smule made a change so that expired invites could also be joined, just could not be bookmarked. Now with this change its like going back to having only 1 week validity Invites ! Singers wishing to join a song will miss out on the majority of OCs since most of them will be older than 7 days, and also it will force users to repeatedly Open songs after expiry thus further cluttering up the smule songbook!

I am using Android smule App. I already raised ticket with smule asking to reverse these changes, and I hope other users agree and also pass the feedback to smule to revert to earlier functionality..

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opentype

Interesting! That’s old Smule! It used to always work like that. Once a song was expired, you couldn’t join it anymore. In recent years, Smule tried to move away from that and allow joining older songs as well. But maybe they now consider it a failed experiment and want to return to the traditional way. 

By the way: it still seems to be possible to join older OC’s from people’s profile pages. 

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Glasnost77

Exactly, recently I have been joining OCs by visiting the Profile page of my known singers/following and navigating back through their channel. But, for relatively new users like me the Search function still remains the main way to discover  OCs of other singers, and now thats been curtailed as well .. 🤦‍♂️

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opentype

Maybe Smule will explain their reasoning in a blog post. After all, they have all the data of what works and what doesn’t. There are pro’s and con’s to each method. OC’s actually expiring creates some urgency. Maybe without that, there was less activity or something else they or the users didn’t like.

For me it hardly made a difference. Even with many years of OC’s, my older OC’s were hardly ever joined, but the number of joins for current OC’s was also low. Maybe going back to the old method now increases the number of OC’s again, because for my followers it’s ‘now or never’, not ‘whenever’.

Well See Schitts Creek GIF by CBC

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Isa_Bella

My followers can still join me even my songs are more than 7 days.. see my attached sample.. 

IMG_8283.jpg

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Glasnost77
8 hours ago, Isa_Bella said:

My followers can still join me even my songs are more than 7 days.. see my attached sample.. 

IMG_8283.jpg

Thanks for the reply, the issue is NOT that old invites cannot be JOINED, rather they cannot be DISCOVERED as before - i.e the invite does not show up in the list when one selects the arrangement after searching for the song in smule songbook. You may refer my original post for the detailed description. So far Smule support has not been helpful, asking me to restart my phone, reinstall the app, take screen recording etc without answering if and why they removed this feature !

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My2CentsWorth

Well, I went to a friend's account to join her newly expired song.  And nope, there is no join button. 

I can start a new recording but there is no one to join, not even other smulers.

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opentype
2 hours ago, My2CentsWorth said:

Well, I went to a friend's account to join her newly expired song.  And nope, there is no join button. 

Have you tried other songs or singers? There might be a problem with that specific song. For example, it might be closed (not just expired). 

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My2CentsWorth

I just went to try others.  There is a join button for the expired songs, but not for this particular friend.  All her expired songs don't have a join button.  🤔

Any idea why?

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Glasnost77

So smule support acknowledged this change:

Hi there,
 
Thank you for your reply.
 
I would also like to mention that due to the changes that our team is developing, older invites will no longer be visible when you are searching for them. 
 
It is very important to note that you can still join older invites, but you will have to look for them in the accounts of the users that you want to join by scrolling through their channels.
 
Please keep in mind that the changes are still in testing and we are collecting feedback from users like you that are reaching out to us with questions and ideas. Based on this feedback our team will make decisions for future updates.
 
Thank you for your patience and understanding!
 
Best regards,

Smule Support Team

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sdr
On 5/17/2023 at 3:50 PM, Glasnost77 said:

older invites will no longer be visible when you are searching for them.

Again, they are trying to take away a good feature. Now you will have to plow to random profiles to see an invite of a song you want to sing. 

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realyquick
On 5/5/2023 at 11:42 AM, Glasnost77 said:

So for the last few days I was not able to search OCs properly and today realised that -Smule made changes in the App, now if I search for all Invites for a particular song (Using Search by song name, then Selecting an Arrangement, press Sing button then press Join button), it only shows Invites of the past 7 days, whereas earlier it used to show all past Invites (have joined OCs from 2018 also in this method). Further, if for any arrangement the last recorded Invite was older than 7 days, then the Join button is greyed out, as if no Invite was ever made for that song !

In the iOS app, there is no such thing as arrangement, I assume you mean you looked at all available invites of a song search and found that it doesn't show expired invites. I thought this was always the case, but generally I don't join people I don't know so I didn't ever join by searching all open invites.

 

Quote

also it will force users to repeatedly Open songs after expiry thus further cluttering up the smule songbook!

How do you open an expired song? I see no way of doing that in the iOS app, is there some non-obvious way to do it or does the Android app give that option?

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Wishchip

Hello. I'm a non-VIP iOS user and I can confirm that I can no longer join ANY expired song. Hopefully it's just a glitch.

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Isa_Bella
6 hours ago, Wishchip said:

Hello. I'm a non-VIP iOS user and I can confirm that I can no longer join ANY expired song. Hopefully it's just a glitch.

Yes you are right... One of my accounts I updated to the latest Version 11.6.5 and all my expired songs cannot be joined anymore.  I checked my other  account, this account was not updated to the latest version and  I can still join the expired songs. 

Edited by Isa_Bella
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Glasnost77
5 hours ago, Isa_Bella said:

Yes you are right... One of my accounts I updated to the latest Version 11.6.5 and all my expired songs cannot be joined anymore.  I checked my other  account, this account was not updated to the latest version and  I can still join the expired songs. 

OMG.. am glad I saw this post, now I will never update my Smule App till they reverse this drastic, unwarranted change ! I also heard from one of my co-singers that expired Invites can no longer be joined.... my Android app version is 10.8.7 build 2315 and it allows to join expired invites.

Hope users will pass the feedback to Smule to reverse this change ! (In Smule App one can go to Help, at the top of screen there is a link to submit feedback

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Glasnost77
On 6/1/2023 at 6:54 AM, realyquick said:

In the iOS app, there is no such thing as arrangement, I assume you mean you looked at all available invites of a song search and found that it doesn't show expired invites. I thought this was always the case, but generally I don't join people I don't know so I didn't ever join by searching all open invites.

 

How do you open an expired song? I see no way of doing that in the iOS app, is there some non-obvious way to do it or does the Android app give that option?

By 'Arrangement' I meant the upload of a song.. for creating an Invite, we browse through the songbook for songs.. those are called arrangements, till we open it to create a duet invite or Solo..

And yes we cannot reopen an expired song, what I meant is that users will keep creating fresh new invites for the same song after it has expired since it is no longer discoverable by search (and not even joinable, with the recent app update)

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Glasnost77

By the way one can workaround the problem of unable to join expired invites.. by backdating the phone Date to few days prior to the Invite expiry date (on some phones more steps may be needed, like restarting and enabling flight mode)...

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Wishchip
14 hours ago, Isa_Bella said:

Yes you are right... One of my accounts I updated to the latest Version 11.6.5 and all my expired songs cannot be joined anymore.  I checked my other  account, this account was not updated to the latest version and  I can still join the expired songs. 

My old iPhone never took that update, so for now, I can still join expired songs on that phone. In fact, I might just make that my thing: "Exclusively joining expired songs since June 2023 (iOS Version 11.6.5)." Hahahaha.

8 hours ago, Glasnost77 said:

By the way one can workaround the problem of unable to join expired invites.. by backdating the phone Date to few days prior to the Invite expiry date (on some phones more steps may be needed, like restarting and enabling flight mode)...

From what I've heard, the "time travel glitch" doesn't work for this. I haven't tried it myself however...

Unfortunately this is a deliberate choice on Smule's part (and not a glitch like I had hoped), for the betterment of all Smule users. Pffft. Or something.

Is anyone on the Singtopia FB page? Apparently there's a petition/campaign going on to try and get the 7-day expiration period removed.

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GEWOK
On 6/1/2023 at 10:36 PM, Glasnost77 said:

By the way one can workaround the problem of unable to join expired invites.. by backdating the phone Date to few days prior to the Invite expiry date (on some phones more steps may be needed, like restarting and enabling flight mode)...

On IOS, latest version, backdating on phone no longer works.  That was probably a bug/oversight that Smule have fixed.

Also, even though I change setting to not auto updating app,  Smule seems to ignore that and update anyway.

It seems the changes to policy is enforced pretty strictly now

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The Minty Clinch

For what it's worth, I can't join any expired songs via any method on my Iphone. Though I can with my android - but of course, smuling on android is a fate worse than death, so I don't.

I was really looking forward to someone, one day, aeons into the future after a nuclear war, joining my Come to the Sabbat by Black Widow OC. And now that shall never happen

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Wishchip

Has anyone else double- and triple-checked that they no longer just blindly download any future Smule updates? Hahaha. 'Cause I have.

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opentype
On 6/5/2023 at 1:24 AM, GEWOK said:

Smule seems to ignore that and update anyway.

Not all functionality is baked into the specific app version. They can also change things on their server and influence how the app works for all users.  

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