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

[[Member Wish…]]

2 minutes ago, The Minty Clinch said:

Everyone who uploads is working for smule for free. And more than likely breaking copyright law while doing so. Hey ho...

Shhhhhhh, don't tell the Eurythmics!

[[Member The…]]

1 minute ago, Wishchip said:

Shhhhhhh, don't tell the Eurythmics!

It ain't them that's the problem, it's their publishing company, U******L

[[Member ItsM…]]

With the update released on June 2023, Smule singers can no longer join invites they bookmarked more than 7 days ago. This is a great inconvenience to all who earlier used to enjoy their bookmarked invites conveniently at their possible time. 7 days is bringing an extreme urgency in this fast moving world. Smule users need a comfortable time period to join their favorite invites. At the moment, the rate at which singers miss to join their favorite invites is more than the rate of people joining collabs. So the purpose of social singing is lost. Smule has clearly communicated in their blog announcement that they aren't going to remove the 7 day expiration. However, can we suggest that they extend the expiry of invites to 21 days (3 weeks)? This will give enough room for singers to join comfortably and thus will have increased participation across the world.

Also this solves Smule's need to  give opportunities for fresher invites to be joined.

Please provide your opinions. Thank you.

Edited June 14, 2023 by krismala
Added tags

[[Member Duet…]]

@ItsMeRKSinger thank you for sharing that. 
 

Here’s what I don’t get. Why does Smule choose the most difficult way possible to enact whatever change they want to see? If they want to make available the latest content, could they not just make the search results favor the newest content? Many years ago, the search results showed the newest invites first, but there were also tabs where you could choose to see the invites that were expiring soonest, and the third option was “video only” which is … eh? They can give users the option of which invites they want to see: newest, expiring first, most popular, etc. They don’t have to funnel all joiners into one super popular invite that no one is going to notice or care if you join. It was Smule’s decision to do that in the first place. So I get that they are trying to revert back to something that makes sense, and add more incentive for more users to have VIP. It is a good business decision for Smule. But still, why did they have to do it this way?

Side note: if you go to my Smule account and see that I have VIP, it’s a gift. Which reminded me that I started carrying vip again for awhile because people were gifting it to me, and I felt bad about it. Anyway …

Honestly, I don’t ever use the search to find songs to join. I just join the people I’m following, and never join random people. But I’ve been singing on Smule long enough that I have many friends I’ve been singing with for years (some as many as seven) and it will be kind of crushing not to be able to go back and join their old invites I missed. One of them tried to join my old ocs the other day, and told me they’re not joinable for him anymore. That is something I’ll miss.

It’s nice to have a place to share, but I should probably send this feedback to Smule, who will ignore it because I’m nobody important to them, and in a year or two when they realize their mistake, will restore joining of expired invites.

 

[[Member The…]]

"Enhancements" is an interesting choice of word. Needless to say, the blog announcement won't open for me, but I don't really need to see it. It'd just be really nice, once, if you (we/I) could talk to a human at smule about unpopular "enhancements", would it not?

[[Member Wish…]]

1 hour ago, DuetWithAlli said:

If they want to make available the latest content, could they not just make the search results favor the newest content? 

That's a really good point, actually. If I search for "Unholy" the search results are listed (on iOS, anyway) in this order:

1. Songs: The business model is "Buy VIP and open the song yourself" so having this first makes sense. The songs are listed by rating and curiously there is no option to filter by "Most Popular" or "Most Recent." As much as this makes sense, I gotta tell ya Smulies, some of y'all are making some really questionable decisions over - presumably - what you consider the "best" upload to be. But I digress.

2. Invites: The business model is "Easily discover the most recent invites." The default filter for invites is "Most Popular." As I've said previously, Smule has always and will always favour the most popular users, so this makes sense for what Smule does. But the default filter should really be by "Closing Soon." Because this is a perfect, albeit subtle, way of showing how the 7-day limit benefits the most popular singers.

3. Groups: Seems like the least important thing that anyone would ever be searching for, but...okay?

4. Singers: Shockingly there's no search filter where the default is by "Most Popular." Hahaha.

5. Recordings: And at the very bottom, the least important thing to Smule (now that they've taken away the ability to join any OC) is Recordings, with a default setting of "Most Popular" naturally. 

 

[[Member Glas…]]

4 hours ago, DuetWithAlli said:

@ItsMeRKSinger thank you for sharing that. 
 

Here’s what I don’t get. Why does Smule choose the most difficult way possible to enact whatever change they want to see? If they want to make available the latest content, could they not just make the search results favor the newest content? Many years ago, the search results showed the newest invites first, but there were also tabs where you could choose to see the invites that were expiring soonest, and the third option was “video only” which is … eh? They can give users the option of which invites they want to see: newest, expiring first, most popular, etc. They don’t have to funnel all joiners into one super popular invite that no one is going to notice or care if you join. It was Smule’s decision to do that in the first place. So I get that they are trying to revert back to something that makes sense, and add more incentive for more users to have VIP. It is a good business decision for Smule. But still, why did they have to do it this way?

Side note: if you go to my Smule account and see that I have VIP, it’s a gift. Which reminded me that I started carrying vip again for awhile because people were gifting it to me, and I felt bad about it. Anyway …

Honestly, I don’t ever use the search to find songs to join. I just join the people I’m following, and never join random people. But I’ve been singing on Smule long enough that I have many friends I’ve been singing with for years (some as many as seven) and it will be kind of crushing not to be able to go back and join their old invites I missed. One of them tried to join my old ocs the other day, and told me they’re not joinable for him anymore. That is something I’ll miss.

It’s nice to have a place to share, but I should probably send this feedback to Smule, who will ignore it because I’m nobody important to them, and in a year or two when they realize their mistake, will restore joining of expired invites.

 

Well, when I started out in smule a few months back, I had 0 followers/following, and the Search function was the only way to select songs to join. Even now when I have a handful of Following, the Search function is (rather, was) better at providing me good OCs to join. For me I dont want my joins to be restricted only to the Songs which are opened by the people I follow. Its much better to have a wider choice from all Invites ever created for a particular song (and I have many criteria which need to be fulfilled for me to join any Invite hehe).

But now that feature is gone, with my old App version I can still join old invites but Searching for OCs has become much more difficult..

[[Member The…]]

To me, it's really unintuitive search function or algorithm or whatever it's called, compared to other sites.

[[Member Duet…]]

4 hours ago, Glasnost77 said:

Well, when I started out in smule a few months back, I had 0 followers/following, and the Search function was the only way to select songs to join. Even now when I have a handful of Following, the Search function is (rather, was) better at providing me good OCs to join. For me I dont want my joins to be restricted only to the Songs which are opened by the people I follow. Its much better to have a wider choice from all Invites ever created for a particular song (and I have many criteria which need to be fulfilled for me to join any Invite hehe).

But now that feature is gone, with my old App version I can still join old invites but Searching for OCs has become much more difficult..

Sorry! No, I totally understand. I did the same starting out. But if I had only super popular invites presented to me by Smule, and joined people who didn’t listen, comment and/or acknowledge my existence in some way, there’s no way I would have stuck with it. The kindness of the Smule community is what kept me coming back. Dang you, kind hearted Smule community!

But I also understand that that what I looked for in invites to join, is not necessarily what other users are looking for.

I hope Smule will take the user feedback into account and find some middle ground as I’ve suggested above, but I’m not holding my breath. And I would definitely like to see improvements to the search function for the sake of people who use it to find invites to join. But people here have been asking Smule for that for a long time, so again, not holding my breath.

[[Member Duet…]]

7 hours ago, Wishchip said:

That's a really good point, actually. If I search for "Unholy" the search results are listed (on iOS, anyway) in this order:

1. Songs: The business model is "Buy VIP and open the song yourself" so having this first makes sense. The songs are listed by rating and curiously there is no option to filter by "Most Popular" or "Most Recent." As much as this makes sense, I gotta tell ya Smulies, some of y'all are making some really questionable decisions over - presumably - what you consider the "best" upload to be. But I digress.

2. Invites: The business model is "Easily discover the most recent invites." The default filter for invites is "Most Popular." As I've said previously, Smule has always and will always favour the most popular users, so this makes sense for what Smule does. But the default filter should really be by "Closing Soon." Because this is a perfect, albeit subtle, way of showing how the 7-day limit benefits the most popular singers.

3. Groups: Seems like the least important thing that anyone would ever be searching for, but...okay?

4. Singers: Shockingly there's no search filter where the default is by "Most Popular." Hahaha.

5. Recordings: And at the very bottom, the least important thing to Smule (now that they've taken away the ability to join any OC) is Recordings, with a default setting of "Most Popular" naturally. 

 

Yes, that is a great summary of the search function on Smule! I definitely miss the “closing soon” option. I loved to join invites no one had joined yet in hopes of making someone’s day. When Smule switched to showing “hot invites” first, I believe the community raised a big fuss about that change. I know I did. That’s probably about the time I stopped searching for songs to join, so it was easy to forget all of that.

But from there, it continued going downhill until it devolved into the mess you’ve described. Why is all that stuff important to see in the search results? It’s giving me a headache just thinking about it.

As far as rating songs goes, I’m guessing people don’t understand why they are asked to rate songs. Either that, or there are people like myself who don’t notice or care about audio quality. I will downvote songs with poor lyric timing, but otherwise, I’m good. I do prefer to use tracks that have a pitch guide, which would favor the most popular uploads and make them more popular, just like everything else on Smule.

[[Member shas…]]

On 6/15/2023 at 4:46 AM, ItsMeRKSinger said:

With the update released on June 2023, Smule singers can no longer join invites they bookmarked more than 7 days ago. This is a great inconvenience to all who earlier used to enjoy their bookmarked invites conveniently at their possible time. 7 days is bringing an extreme urgency in this fast moving world. Smule users need a comfortable time period to join their favorite invites. At the moment, the rate at which singers miss to join their favorite invites is more than the rate of people joining collabs. So the purpose of social singing is lost. Smule has clearly communicated in their blog announcement that they aren't going to remove the 7 day expiration. However, can we suggest that they extend the expiry of invites to 21 days (3 weeks)? This will give enough room for singers to join comfortably and thus will have increased participation across the world.

Also this solves Smule's need to  give opportunities for fresher invites to be joined.

Please provide your opinions. Thank you.

Good suggestion  👍

[[Member Glas…]]

To me this change from Smule seems to be targeted towards Openers of songs. Those who frequently open songs and create Invite buffets may find this useful, but the point which smule is overlooking is that a majority of the users join OCs more often than create them. If you look at any random profile's channel, chances are that there will be a large no. of joins but rather few Invites. So if a majority of users are joining OCs rather than creating it, this restriction of 1 week validity is frustrating and severely limiting the choice of quality OCs available to join. Smule should reverse this change.

[[Member _Joe…]]

I write in the ipetition: “

 

<<It’s a completely nonsense to put a limit of 7 days. Maybe I am sick this week or I left for the last day and in this day I have headache and don’t feel good to sing! Why do they want we sing even feeling bad??? Is even a nonsense if you do a great open call when you feel good to OPEN AGAIN! when you feel bad. What is the proposal… to sing bad recordings or join badly only to join before it expires? Absurd.>>

I add, even if you aren’t sick. People have to work, do chores… it’s impossible to learn a new song, dress you up to appear on video, recording a song, repeat it if it’s not good… in one week.

i say more … I will not take the disturbing to open a call knowing it will be closed and disappear in one week. I have been and I still am a VIP user from 2016 (7 years) and I am paying for the app! I can understand non-VIP can only join the open calls for the last week or the last month BUT no the VIP users that PAY!

Last month I feel a little lack of energy to sing and I wanted to join the open calls of my friends that I couldn’t join! 
 

I can see that it’s still possible to join old OC in one old device I have and couldn’t update. The solution is to buy an old device.🙄

 

[[Member _Joe…]]

They can do a lot of things: that in the search box only appears the open calls from the last 7 days, one month or whatever. But they have to allow you to entry in the profile of an specific user (that he/she can be your friend) and join all his/her open calls. At least if you’re VIP because you’re paying.

Even If the song is very rare it will be impossible to be sung again.

Completely nonsense. I sent feedback to them, I hope these guys are smart and correct it.

[[Member Duet…]]

23 hours ago, _Joe_Church_ said:

They can do a lot of things: that in the search box only appears the open calls from the last 7 days, one month or whatever.

Agree 100 percent! They could have done this, simply changed it so that only new invites appear in the search results. It would have made a lot of VIP users happy at the expense of a few popular singers. But yet again, Smule has upset many long time customers. More happy people equals more paying subscribers. What were they thinking? I also agree that if they are smart, they will realize their mistake and correct it.

[[Member Wish…]]

It's currently pending, but Smule is planning on rolling out a 14-day additional extension for any duet invites for VIP members.

[[Member _Joe…]]

On 6/30/2023 at 10:02 PM, Wishchip said:

It's currently pending, but Smule is planning on rolling out a 14-day additional extension for any duet invites for VIP members.

Something is something but not sufficient. If they want put a limited time to non VIP is ok (7, 14, one month or whatever) but VIP members is paying, VIP must have unlimited time, the most of the times you are not going to join old open calls but must be your choice because VIP is paying.

[[Member LGFI…]]

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 !

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..

Completely agree!  I also “raised a ticket” with Smule on this.  I agree with you that such changes are a regression rather than progression.  I didn’t mind being unable to bookmark ‘expired collabs’ but truly enjoyed the freedom to search and join ALL collaborations regardless of time spans.

From a (Smule) business perspective and as a former business owner (and obviously, Smule customer and user myself), I think that putting such short time pressure for members to join collaborations is actually counterproductive.  

While I like having the freedom to search and join new and older recordings, I usually search within a 3-month window but have no issues when folks decide to join my older collaborations, even if it’s older than a year.  As a long-term user and paying customer, I think we should be free and able to choose and decide when and which collaborations we wish to join and that such should have to time limitations, meaning, we should be able to join ALL duet collaborations regardless of when such collaborations were posted.  

As far as group collaborations goes, I think such are on a “class of its own”, as it (obviously) differs from duets.  Therefore, I trust Smule is long due for a “group collab reform” as there’s a need to improve “technicalities”, including time spans and how members who open group collabs and those who join are able (or not) to edit, delete, or perhaps even “crop” from both audio and video in such group recordings.  I think it makes far more sense to allow VIP members who open group collaborations decide on how long such invites should be opened for others to join.  

Naturally, Smule administrators might have too much of a “tunnel vision” in terms of “lucrative bottom lines”, which is understandable.  However, making decisions solely based on numbers often proves wrong and therefore, detrimental to the business.  

In the end, customer satisfaction is the ‘lifeline’ of every business!  

I speak for myself that I’m far less inclined to sing when I feel pressured to do so within a certain time frame than when I know such time frames aren’t obstacles in my ability to join both current and older collaborations.  Let’s be honest, 7 days go by like a ‘flash’, especially to those of us who live productive, busy lives and have many responsibilities and priorities that we must tend to and fulfill timely.  

I know there are many other Smule “paid” customers who are also unhappy with time pressures and limitations in terms of collaboration invites and its rather short expiration dates; not to count all the ‘technical roller coasters’ and regressions therein.  

I speak for myself when I say that my idea of entertainment, especially when it comes to music and singing, involves NO pressures, including time limitations, which are a huge turn off and certainly not fun…not for me, anyhow!

Any pressure and it’s no longer enjoyable to me.  Simple as that! After all, it’s not like this is a “Got Talent” contest rather a karaoke “singing” app!  

If Smule wants to put pressure and time limitations, they should limit such pressures and limitations to its competitions and those who choose to enter such “Smule karaoke contests”.  For example, those who are group administrators within Smule should be able to put their own time limitations, as they open their own “audition collaborations” in order to add to their group members.  

I didn’t join Smule to compete or join any groups.  I think it’s cool that folks can have their own groups there and put up their own unique rules and contests within such groups.  

But I didn’t join Smule to join groups or contests.  I joined Smule to sing leisurely.  

Therefore, I don’t enjoy or appreciate any type of pressure and silly time limitations which I find completely unfair, unnecessary, illogical, frustrating, and therefore, counterproductive for their business!  

As far as I’m concerned, time pressures and limitations are out of place for those who pay to sing leisurely, which is probably true for the vast majority of Smule VIP members.  Also, what does “VIP” truly mean when we’re limited to a mere 7-day period in which we must join collaborations that we care to bookmark?  

For me, it’s a waste of time to bookmark duet collaborations these days because I usually miss the 7-day period. It’s beyond frustrating. It’s upsetting to pay for a service only to find that I can’t join collaborations that I bookmarked because it has “expired” after 7 days.  I don’t consider such silly and highly unnecessary pressures and time limitations good business handling as it doesn’t promote customer freedom of choice.  If it’s not good for customers, it’s not good for the business.  Period!  If it was, we wouldn’t be here talking about it and users wouldn’t be “opening tickets” in order to complain about it, now would we? 

Sorry for my “long book” here!  

 

[[Member Trul…]]

If they can leave it open in definitely. It makes it easier on us who are busy and allows us to join each other OC's whenever we want versus the standard 7 days then it expires.

 

I didn't do the update so I can still join old ocs

Edited September 22, 2023 by TrulyBlessed36

[[Member Wish…]]

On 7/13/2023 at 5:29 PM, LGFITNESS said:

From a (Smule) business perspective and as a former business owner (and obviously, Smule customer and user myself), I think that putting such short time pressure for members to join collaborations is actually counterproductive.  

I understand them putting limits on OCs because they probably saw a huge uptick in non-VIPs using the app, realized they could make FAR more money by bringing limits back, and then hoped a percentage of non-VIP would pay for VIP. The two years of non-expiring OCs was effectively used as a "First one's free" deal, as a way to bring in new users. Once that deal was up, Smule basically said "ok free users, you've had your fun" and took the feature away for everybody.

They probably also saw a LOT of paid users not renew their VIP subscription during the creamy, dreamy days of eternal OCs and realized they were losing money because of it. 

It's still odd that Smule didn't simply disallow this feature for non-VIP users. Instead, paid VIP users get punished because of those cheap freeloaders. They've actually made VIP less attractive to non-VIPs, because now no one can keep their Invites open indefinitely* so aside from opening songs yourself, what else does being a VIP get you? I mean, besides a lighter wallet. Smule needs to work on making a VIP subscription look SO attractive that it's unfathomable to not be one.

Smule removing features from their paying customers in hopes of gaining more customers. Classic $mule.

*well except for Ambassadors, popular users Smule prefers, artists and paid brands.