Jamkazam is moving onto Paid Subscriptions. Donors and volunteers' thoughts?

[Yoon Lee]

Dimitri, and others,

What would be the example of ‘The other platforms/apps/programs also have been on the ball for the last 8 months.’, and would you care to share them? (Whether it be an app, or website/forum) Thank you.

Seeing Jamkazam quietly posting paid subscription plan on their website while still accepting donations, is worth an orange flag for me. If I would guess Jamkazam operators’ priorities based on the conduct we see, asking ‘What’s next then?’ and staying informed about alternatives would be a fair thing to do if nothing else.

I have less problem with their pricing than I have with the paid plan quietly being introduced while still taking donations, disclosing the plan directly to past and future donors would only be fair, unless donors were instead buying shares. I also wish to see a rough budget breakdown on how the money is helping them get the Jamkazam on track. Any amount of money can do very many things, or very little things, accountability/transparency can help it do better.
As for the pricing, whatever they charge, people will either stay or leave. The software still being hard to depend on with half the features working for only some people some of the time, security concerns etc. would affect customers’ decision as well. I hope this rather pioneering platform won’t drop the ball on the donors and volunteers goodwill, or make shady or greedy choices.

[Dimitri Muskens]

Dimitri, and others,

What would be the example of ‘The other platforms/apps/programs also have been on the ball for the last 8 months.’, and would you care to share them? (Whether it be an app, or website/forum) Thank you.

Seeing Jamkazam quietly posting paid subscription plan on their website while still accepting donations, is worth an orange flag for me. If I would guess Jamkazam operators’ priorities based on the conduct we see, asking ‘What’s next then?’ and staying informed about alternatives would be a fair thing to do if nothing else.

I have less problem with their pricing than I have with the paid plan quietly being introduced while still taking donations, disclosing the plan directly to past and future donors would only be fair, unless donors were instead buying shares. I also wish to see a rough budget breakdown on how the money is helping them get the Jamkazam on track. Any amount of money can do very many things, or very little things, accountability/transparency can help it do better.
As for the pricing, whatever they charge, people will either stay or leave. The software still being hard to depend on with half the features working for only some people some of the time, security concerns etc. would affect customers’ decision as well. I hope this rather pioneering platform won’t drop the ball on the donors and volunteers goodwill, or make shady or greedy choices.

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Hi Yoon Lee,
I'm not sure if this forum would be the right place to go into other platforms/apps/programs 'like' Jamkazam. Nor would I be the right person to do so. Although I have no connection whatsoever with the devs of JKZ, I am a mod on this forum. (not biased, just good behavior)
But hey, google's your friend. The info is out there and easy to find.
D./

[greg4168@gmail.com]

In my opinion JK would be well worth paying for if it were stable enough. I have almost constant crashes and could use some help from the devs to determine the cause, but posting in the forums has led to no response from them, so at the very least they need to get on top of user support before charging for the service. My bandmates and I have spent many, many, hours trying to get it to work reliably since it first came out many years ago and have not been very successful. I love all the recent updates but it still isn't stable enough for me to rely on and leads to spending much more time trying to get it working vs. working on actual music. It may be helpful for the devs to work directly with some of their users to help them out and to learn what issues are occurring in order to lead to improvements in the product. If they can get it to be more stable they can make a huge amount of money from it.

[StuartR]

In my opinion JK would be well worth paying for if it were stable enough.  I have almost constant crashes and could use some help from the devs to determine the cause, but posting in the forums has led to no response from them, so at the very least they need to get on top of user support before charging for the service.  My bandmates and I have spent many, many, hours trying to get it to work reliably since it first came out many years ago and have not been very successful.  I love all the recent updates but it still isn't stable enough for me to rely on and leads to spending much more time trying to get it working vs. working on actual music.  It may be helpful for the devs to work directly with some of their users to help them out and to learn what issues are occurring in order to lead to improvements in the product.  If they can get it to be more stable they can make a huge amount of money from it.

Gregg - are these "crashes" you're reporting actually JK client application crashes? Are you using JK on a MAC or a PC?

[Jens Schumann]

Interesting news, since March we have been testing software to make music over the Internet. In the end there were two candidates, Jamkazam and Jamulus. We still use Jamulus to this day. Why? Jamkazam delivers a very good quality, but it is still very faulty and actually cannot be installed and adjusted for laypeople. Jamulus doesn't have that many features and is only of good quality, but it is very easy to install and runs flawlessly.
Every now and then we test Jamkazam to see if it works. But it still doesn't work today.
100% packet loss to a number of participants
disconnect from server (somtimes 3 times in 10 minutes)
Jamkazam can cause a reboot of the router (It's really happened at least in every session)
No audio problem (I know the things with the ports!)

What happens to the donations?

[Yoon Lee]

As for the alternatives, so far I’ve tried...

Real-time jam (with latency from the physical distances)
Jamulus (client) - simple, but slower at distances as it doesn’t have a p2p option.
Jamkazam (client/p2p) - works when it works, UI and stability issues.
Soundjack (p2p) - it worked well for me, UI is not designed to be pretty just yet...
JackTrip (p2p) - I already had a software audio re-router installed on my computer and didn’t want to mess with Jack - it’s not as simple to run unless you’re comfortable running things from terminal. Anyone had experience with these?

Online looper sort (you don’t deal with latency/sync anymore because you’re overdubbing on tracks other folks played a little while ago. - not great for jazz/improvised music as you don’t get the immediate reaction from others in the room, but if you just wanna groove, this works)
Ninjam - I used Jamtaba 2, which aggregates a bunch of ninjam servers onto one easy-to-use app.
Jammr - well, this one looked rather vacant, couldn’t really test one with anyone while I was on it for a couple of days.

As for the populousness of the users on these services, (3rd quarter 2020) seemingly Jamkazam has the most people on, then I’d say Jamtaba2, and Soundjack, then Jamulus, Jacktrip I haven’t tried myself. Jamkazam and soudjack has friending functions, with ninjam and supposedly JackTrip supplemented by forum/community.
The social network aspect seems to be the big factor for any app’s popularity, and while Jamkazam is a SNS/p2p and client combo app, it really is the least stable.

I’d like to use soundjack more for jamming with people I have contact outside Jamkazam, for the simplicity (install a control app and run it from a web browser - safari currently not supported) and p2p connection. (Minimal latency when compared to client/server option) Sound quality is very good on it as well. The UI looks more of a work in progress to me, but hey, it’s p2p and it works.

Again, any news/updates/experience on the JackTrip anyone? If anyone could compare it to Other services?

[kydbrenner]

Hi, everyone. 

I just tried opening Jamkazam on my mobile device and found the updated jamkazam webpage showing planned monthly pricing for a number of subscription tiers. 

https://jamkazam.com/remote-music-rehearsals/

Free versions would be limited to 4hrs/month, with each session being limited to 1hr/month, and three paid tiers being offered. 

I understand that Jamkazam now has a sizable community of users and assume that there are cost involved in hosting servers, maintenance and development etc. So Jamkazam finding a sustainable way of growth is something I've been looking forward to, and I believe this wish is shared among many. 

My question is rather, if the existing members had received any newsletters or announcement regarding this change, ESPECIALLY the volunteers and the donors who is helping Jamkazam reach their fundraising goal and more. (no-strings-attached, goodwill donations as far as what I can see)
Seeing the updated page on the plans and pricing without having received any announcement or newsletter, should come as a lack of transparency and consistency to the donors and volunteers, if not all users who are helping to improve Jamkazam by effectively beta testing it as they use it, and actively sending crash reports etc.  
If I may point out as an example, the 'Most Popular' highlight on the middle tier paid subscription plan on their website - I assume this is a common marketing practice yet is a false statement, as nobody on Jamkazam so far could've been a paid subscriber as the plans are listed as 'coming soon' at the time of this posting. Therefore there cannot be any data on which plan is the most popular. 

• Fellow users, have you received any announcement or newsletter regarding the coming paid subscription plans? 
  

• And to the Jamkazam operators, would you share/comment on my concerns regarding the lack of communication on your planned change into a paid subscription service, especially for those who has been volunteers and donors?
  

• And again, the community of people who make Jamkazam such a lively and noisy place - what are your thoughts?
  

Thanks and greetings to everyone, 

- Yoon

I only heard about the move to subscription by chance today on a jam.  Have not received any communication from JK even though they have all of our e-mail addresses from our profiles.  I have no problem with a subscription service, but made a decent size donation to the GoFundMe, think they would be reaching out to the people who raised over $100K for them directly.

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I only heard about the move to subscription by chance today on a jam.  Have not received any communication from JK even though they have all of our e-mail addresses from our profiles.  I have no problem with a subscription service, but made a decent size donation to the GoFundMe, think they would be reaching out to the people who raised over $100K for them directly.

(sorry about this getting posted in the initial comment)

[Sharpie]

Hi, everyone. 

I just tried opening Jamkazam on my mobile device and found the updated jamkazam webpage showing planned monthly pricing for a number of subscription tiers. 

This seems a little cheeky given that they have raised a lot of money from folk via GoFundMe, and the GoFundMe page is still open and taking donations. See https://uk.gofundme.com/f/cy2fsq-keep-ja...-improving

Are they going to give an unlimited sub to those who've donated, or cut them off and ask for more money?

Similarly, all those folk who've been helping them test and develop - do they get nothing in return?

All seems like a start-up strategy from the founder, David Wilson, to improve the value of his investment.  Time to switch back to Jamulus which is open source and maintained (for free) by a bunch of keen volunteers.  Jamulus is client/server so it works better if people are spread around the place - it also scales better because you just have the one connection to the server, irrespective of how many are jamming.  Of course it means the server placement is critical - but it works well on Amazon's free tier hosting.

[CMiska]

Are the paid premium user subscriptions available yet? I see the paid tiers and descriptions, but I cannot find where to sign up for them. If they're available please post a link. TIA.

[Dimitri Muskens]

Are the paid premium user subscriptions available yet? I see the paid tiers and descriptions, but I cannot find where to sign up for them. If they're available please post a link. TIA.

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Not yet in place.