After 7 years of VIP, I'm no longer one. What's the non-VIP experience like?

[Abundiz93]

Hello, everybody.

You might know me on Smule as Abundiz93. And as the title says, I'm no longer a VIP after 7 years in a row. The price of my subscription was pretty cheap (5 USD a year), but due to several issues I wasn't paying attention to my billing and got automatically cancelled. Now I have to pay the current price of 50 USD yearly, which I refuse to given the features aren't worth enough for me on that price. Support wasn't able to help me this time.

I look at my profile: no banner, no custom name, and only having access to 100 of the 10K songs I've uploaded to the platform across the years. It feels naked, strip of any content once had. But I don't understand how the non-VIP user deals with all this. So, to anybody out there, what's the experience like?

Will I go back to VIP? I don't know. I'm trying to adapt to this new experience. Maybe when I'm more financially stable. Or maybe I'll drop the platform slowly, I didn't really uploaded much besides the songbook which finally reached the 500 songs mark! Wish the platform rewarded this, since most of the music comes from the users.

Have a wonderful day!

[opentype]

Keep in mind that in the past one could always switch between VIP and non-VIP without any problems. Now Smule will actually delete songs older than a year for non-VIP accounts. You won’t get them back even if you become VIP again. 

[Duets.fm]

@Abundiz93 Don't you want to at least download your 10K songs, before cancelling your VIP account? Why lose them? 

[Wishchip]

I think it all depends on how you use Smule. If you’re a casual user and mostly enjoy singing popular or semi-popular songs, you will always find someone to join something you like. Or if you can find and follow VIPs who are into your kind of music (if it’s not the popular stuff), then you’ve got it made. Non-VIP isn’t nearly as terrible as Smule wants everyone to think it is, as much as they try.

I just recently became VIP again, but I was happily non-VIP for a good while (my Smule “history” is below) and I rarely felt limited by my non-VIP status. VIP “perks” like the banner and the custom name (I actually don’t even know what that is) are irrelevant to me. Only having access to 100 songs on my channel makes no difference, because you can always search your name with another user’s name or the song name and you can find what you’re looking for. Also, the very excellent DUETS FM app (that Smule doesn’t want anyone to know about) puts no such limits on what you can and can’t listen to. I really just think that as a VIP user for 7 years, you’ve simply grown accustomed to those elements, but they don’t really amount to much when you think about it.

The biggest move Smule made to make the non-VIP experience worse was to remove non-expiring OCs in May of 2023. They realized lots of users weren’t renewing their VIP subscription because…why bother? As a non-VIP, you could literally join any OC ever made. So they rolled out the 7-day invite limit as a way to encourage people to become VIP again and to sell more subscriptions.

As you’re an uploader, you should also know that even though you’re non-VIP, you can open any of your own uploads and have it open for 48 hours. Granted, that limits how many joins you would receive, but it’s better than nothing.

I would suggest staying non-VIP for as long as you can, but while you’re there, think about what it is you miss about VIP and whether those things are a deal breaker or not.

My user history:
Non-VIP: Jan 2021 – April 2021
VIP: April 2021 – April 2022
Non-VIP with non-expiring OCs: April 2022 – May 2023
(Song Uploader: Oct 2022 – Present)
Non-VIP with expiring OCs: May 2023 – Dec 2023
VIP: Jan 2024 – Present

[RaShMee]

On 2/8/2024 at 4:20 PM, Duets.fm said:

@Abundiz93 Don't you want to at least download your 10K songs, before cancelling your VIP account? Why lose them? 

@Duets.fm I have a different question- I have this app! Now, can I chose what songs I want to download in the Duets.fm App?

[Duets.fm]

@RaShMee Duets.fm app will store the last N songs you played (for 10 seconds minimum), for offline listening, where N can be set from the 'songs' tab. At this point, you cannot choose which songs to store.   

[Duets.fm]

@RaShMee You can now set some songs that you have played (and been downloaded) to not be purged in Duets.fm. 

[Anshuman]

Smule is now charging hefty for vip subscription. I am not sure if I am going to purchase it again. Although any application is free to charge..but I was happy that this platform in the past was something which gave happy moment to very common people who may not be so skilled to perform in concerts but would sing their heart out have been limited to their closet again. With money in mind smule could never cherish the fact that richness of music and happiness that it brings is unrelated to the richness of pocket. 
 

Edited May 31 by Anshuman

[SingingFool]

A drawback to being non-VIP is that your duets from OCs you posted are susceptible for deletion as per Smule’s “content removal initiative.” A space saving measure. If you’re VIP then you won’t lose any duets from OCs that you posted. If you’re non-VIP, you could lose duets from OCs you posted (but your joins to folks with VIP should be safe).  https://smule.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/22477904780308-Profile-Storage-FAQ

[Guest]

Yeah it's not cool some of the changes smule has been making lately