Smule blog: Sing Live Update: Session Time Extended to 10 Hours

[_SingSalon_]

At Smule, we’re dedicated to making our app the best place for you to connect and share your love of music. Recently, we implemented an update to our Sing Live feature introducing a 120-minute time limit per session. This change was designed to encourage higher-quality sessions while optimizing efficiency and resources for future enhancements. After collecting feedback and tracking usage after the limit introduction, we recognize that many of you enjoy singing and connecting for longer durations, especially during charity events and competitions.

To better support your needs, we’ve extended the session limit to 10 hours, effective on August 14th, 2024. 

View the full article on the Smule blog

[Wishchip]

So here's my question. Did Smule just grossly and laughably underestimate the importance of Live Jams and how much people actually use them, or was the announcement of a 2-hour limit just an intentional lowball to make the 10-hour limit go down easier?

When Smule announced the 2-hour limit, people were immediately up in arms over it. Even Ambassadors were hating on this idea. Was this a surprise to Smule? Certainly they can see the numbers and the amount of activity on Live Jams to know 2 hours wasn't a realistic amount of time. Nine days later, Smule announced they were able to boost the limit to 10 hours, "after collecting feedback and tracking usage after the limit introduction." Are Smule really that out of touch with their own app that they have no idea what features their users value?

Doesn't Smule run their crazy ideas by their committee anymore? What's the point of having groups like Frontman (whose purpose is to provide discussion and feedback on upcoming features before they're rolled out) when Smule clearly isn't listening to feedback? Maybe Smule should track usage before they start implementing restrictions.

My guess is 10 hours was always Smule's intended limit, but in order for users to not be upset about that, they needed to first announce something absolutely wild like a 2-hour limit, so Smule could eventually fly in and save the day "to better support our needs" by "extending" the limit to 10 hours, even though that was their intention all along. It's a sneaky business trick, I just wish I knew what it was called. Hahaha.

[SingingFool]

16 hours ago, Wishchip said:

When Smule announced the 2-hour limit, people were immediately up in arms over it. Even Ambassadors were hating on this idea. Was this a surprise to Smule? Certainly they can see the numbers and the amount of activity on Live Jams to know 2 hours wasn't a realistic amount of time. Nine days later, Smule announced they were able to boost the limit to 10 hours, "after collecting feedback and tracking usage after the limit introduction." Are Smule really that out of touch with their own app that they have no idea what features their users value?

Did that petition have any influence on the decision to expand the time limit from 2 to 10 hours? I was impressed that people cared that much to actually make a petition! I don’t use Live Jams (I tried a couple times and found it very frustrating) so I’m surprised that it seems to be  popular & a mainstay for some…like the whopping 72 people had signed that petition (yes I looked at the link 😆). If that petition DID have any influence then I think we should start some other ones like Take Away Expiration Dates on OCs and Stop Deleting Non-VIP Songs! Policies that I actually care about. 

[Wishchip]

On 8/21/2024 at 11:27 PM, SingingFool said:

Did that petition have any influence on the decision to expand the time limit from 2 to 10 hours? 

I'm usually pretty skeptical when it comes to the effectiveness of petitions, much less those concerning Smule and those with less than 100 signatures. If petitions did work, someone would have long ago collected hundreds of signatures petitioning for a logout button on the app.

I'm speculating, but in this instance I'm sure it was a few high-profile users (including some Ambassadors) that voiced their concerns over the limit. And since extending Live Jams a few more hours didn't negatively affect Smule's bottom line, they were probably more than happy to oblige. And this is all assuming it wasn't Smule's plan all along. 

[ItsMeRKSinger]

On 8/21/2024 at 5:01 AM, Wishchip said:

So here's my question. Did Smule just grossly and laughably underestimate the importance of Live Jams and how much people actually use them, or was the announcement of a 2-hour limit just an intentional lowball to make the 10-hour limit go down easier?

When Smule announced the 2-hour limit, people were immediately up in arms over it. Even Ambassadors were hating on this idea. Was this a surprise to Smule? Certainly they can see the numbers and the amount of activity on Live Jams to know 2 hours wasn't a realistic amount of time. Nine days later, Smule announced they were able to boost the limit to 10 hours, "after collecting feedback and tracking usage after the limit introduction." Are Smule really that out of touch with their own app that they have no idea what features their users value?

Doesn't Smule run their crazy ideas by their committee anymore? What's the point of having groups like Frontman (whose purpose is to provide discussion and feedback on upcoming features before they're rolled out) when Smule clearly isn't listening to feedback? Maybe Smule should track usage before they start implementing restrictions.

My guess is 10 hours was always Smule's intended limit, but in order for users to not be upset about that, they needed to first announce something absolutely wild like a 2-hour limit, so Smule could eventually fly in and save the day "to better support our needs" by "extending" the limit to 10 hours, even though that was their intention all along. It's a sneaky business trick, I just wish I knew what it was called. Hahaha.

Someone from Smule could be monitoring this Sing Salon forum or who knows, they could be here as one of community members 😀😀. So they might have seen the feedback threads here. I am sure this is the only forum pretty closely linking to our Smule profiles for them to know the authenticity of the members and their feedback here.

[ItsMeRKSinger]

On 8/21/2024 at 9:27 PM, SingingFool said:

Did that petition have any influence on the decision to expand the time limit from 2 to 10 hours? I was impressed that people cared that much to actually make a petition! I don’t use Live Jams (I tried a couple times and found it very frustrating) so I’m surprised that it seems to be  popular & a mainstay for some…like the whopping 72 people had signed that petition (yes I looked at the link 😆). If that petition DID have any influence then I think we should start some other ones like Take Away Expiration Dates on OCs and Stop Deleting Non-VIP Songs! Policies that I actually care about. 

Smule is a very small company. So, probably they didn't want to get into publicly deciding matters and legal stuff. So, they may have changed it themselves. Just my wild guess. If at all they feel live jam doesn't generate revenue, there are alternatives too. They can run banner Ads inside the live jam window or even a 10 second video Ad when someone joins a live jam channel. Given the number of active live jams at any point of a 24/7 day, this revenue stream will help them.