When today's update loaded I saw a message to the effect of "my capabilities have been reduced to match my subscription plan'. Not sure what this means exactly since I never chose a subscription plan. My session tonight did not seem limited in any way.
Going to the JK website I see the (upcoming?) paid subscription plans. We all know this was inevitable and nobody begrudges JK for monetizing it's product.
However, I caution JK that they must hold up their end of the bargain once they start charging money. The JK platform has been crap for most of the past 2 months. JK has to do better. Nobody is going to be happy to be paying and still having problematic sessions where players can't join or hear each other or keep cra$ng.
You wouldn't put up with your email provider being unavailable or limited every 3rd time you used it. What happens when the platform is unavailable? Will JK provide refunds?
JamKazam must be serious about uptime and support. I hope they are paying attention.
I donated to JK's gofundme several times to help them along. But I hope they are not going to start charging us for the much-less-than-satisfactory experience we've all been suffering with for months. I will be happy to select a paid subscription plan if JK steps up to the plate and starts playing Subscription Platform Provider like the big boys. However, the platform as of late plus the lack of support, abundance of errors and issues, and the endless releases reeks of being an engineer-run company with no real quality assurance and is not ready for prime time. Think about getting a real CEO - he/she will understand customer satisfaction and friction-reduction.
I cannot find any information on whether it is possible to downgrade to the free plan at any time. Iow, could I subscribe to gold or platinum for a month, do my recording, the go back to free?
and is it correct that to do a recording, all parties taking part need to be subscribed to gold?
I'd also very much like to try and understand how this works.
If I have a premium account and my band mates have only free accounts and I'm hosting the session, do we all get thrown out after an hour?
If I'm giving a music lesson (so must have a Platinum account) to someone with a Gold account, I have 512kpbs and 1080p video, how does that work for my pupil who has 256kbps and video resolution of 720p?
I'd hoped to use this for my band, choir and music lessons, but before I ask people to shell out for audio equipment etc. I need to understand how it works if different participants are on different plans.
I have to say, if it is true that all participants have to get the higher plans to use them, that seems a little overambitious. Why not do it like zoom, where the host needs to have the account, but the participants can then take part for free.
The whole idea of a growing community gets defeated that way. It was difficult enough to get colleagues to invest into the equipment needed and set it all up, now one also has to persuade them to pay monthly fees. That's not going to work, you are cutting off your user base that way.
I am not against paying for the service, but I don't think this has much of a future, if indeed it works like this.
12-04-2020, 03:55 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-04-2020, 04:03 PM by StuartR.)
(12-04-2020, 03:03 PM)Johannes Wrote: I have to say, if it is true that all participants have to get the higher plans to use them, that seems a little overambitious. Why not do it like zoom, where the host needs to have the account, but the participants can then take part for free.
The whole idea of a growing community gets defeated that way. It was difficult enough to get colleagues to invest into the equipment needed and set it all up, now one also has to persuade them to pay monthly fees. That's not going to work, you are cutting off your user base that way.
I am not against paying for the service, but I don't think this has much of a future, if indeed it works like this. I agree and I'm lobbying them to include a band/group tier that provides a discounted, uniform feature set for all members.
They also need to provide documentation on the use of the new feature-set (mesh network, audio relay servers and network acceleration) that they're rolling out. Some of us have seen some of the new network route settings in the JK client but haven't had any official description of how and when to use any of them.
Why not give the ability to host sessions of any length and with any free or paying member, including all benefits of higher bitrates for every one taking part, recordings etc as part of the Platinum plan? Including lessons, it is ridiculous to require students to become paying members for music lessons.
That way I would be willing to pay the extra fee for that plan.
The more I think about it, the more I think this whole payment idea has not been thought about much. My guess is that if they go this path the whole thing will die soon.
Who am I to say. But you will certainly loose me as a customer, if you stick to this. And I am very willing to be a paying customer, even with the Platinum plan, if this gives me hosting capability.
Dear Jamkazam,
The points that stand out from posts so far for me are:
- Documentation, now or real soon please, about the new features that we are going to be paying for (especially mesh and latency)
- Using the Zoom model of pricing: a host with gold plan can make the session run longer and have more musicians in the session
- Having a "Band" plan or "Class" plan if not using the Zoom model
- Dealing with the issues that seem to always be around -- mind you i understand this is a chicken & egg issue as you need more engineers to deal with the issues and you need to pay engineers, so as a software engineer i will understand that this could take a little time to get more stable than it is now
In perspective, i tried getting this to work back in April. But due to issues with my band members and other things in the way, three of us finally jammed last night (mostly in the mid to high 20ms latency range with occasional blips into the 30s) after many months of not jamming together. And all this time i wondered, how can they do this without it being a paid service. And in reality you can't.
Thanks Jamkazam for getting as far as you have done so far with a free service. I'm hoping for a successful launch of a stable paid platform which addresses the concerns above.
Stay safe,
Dan
(12-04-2020, 03:03 PM)Johannes Wrote: I have to say, if it is true that all participants have to get the higher plans to use them, that seems a little overambitious. Why not do it like zoom, where the host needs to have the account, but the participants can then take part for free.
The whole idea of a growing community gets defeated that way. It was difficult enough to get colleagues to invest into the equipment needed and set it all up, now one also has to persuade them to pay monthly fees. That's not going to work, you are cutting off your user base that way.
I am not against paying for the service, but I don't think this has much of a future, if indeed it works like this.
Zoom is different from JK in one critical way. In Zoom the host is hosting and managing and presenting (or allowing presentations) while everyone else essentially observes. In a JK jam, everyone is actively engaged in playing: it's more of a collaboration than a presentation. That takes more resources than being a passive participant on Zoom. I think we're going to find out that a Gold or Platinum user can start sessions of any length and manage them (just like Zoom), lower-tier users are going to be able to join those sessions but will be limited in the number of hours per month (or per session for basic users). So they'll be able to join a session, but once their time runs out they'll be bumped. This doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
I do hope that there will be some sort of group plan though, where a Platinum user can start a session and others can pay maybe $5 per month and be allowed to play with their "group leader" (and other group members) for as much time as needed. That would work for band practice, choir practice, and lots of other group activities.
I'm also wondering about the teaching/learning tiers. I don't mind having to be a Platinum subscriber to teach, but it doesn't seem reasonable (or enforceable) to ask a student to be a Gold member if they're only there for a lesson once a week. Perhaps my $5 per month "group" suggestion would work for this purpose as well: we could establish a group for our students and they could pay for that tier or more if they chose.
Cindy Harris
Pittsburgh, PA
12-04-2020, 11:01 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-04-2020, 11:07 PM by StuartR.)
(12-04-2020, 08:52 PM)cah329a Wrote: (12-04-2020, 03:03 PM)Johannes Wrote: I have to say, if it is true that all participants have to get the higher plans to use them, that seems a little overambitious. Why not do it like zoom, where the host needs to have the account, but the participants can then take part for free.
The whole idea of a growing community gets defeated that way. It was difficult enough to get colleagues to invest into the equipment needed and set it all up, now one also has to persuade them to pay monthly fees. That's not going to work, you are cutting off your user base that way.
I am not against paying for the service, but I don't think this has much of a future, if indeed it works like this.
Zoom is different from JK in one critical way. In Zoom the host is hosting and managing and presenting (or allowing presentations) while everyone else essentially observes. In a JK jam, everyone is actively engaged in playing: it's more of a collaboration than a presentation. That takes more resources than being a passive participant on Zoom. I think we're going to find out that a Gold or Platinum user can start sessions of any length and manage them (just like Zoom), lower-tier users are going to be able to join those sessions but will be limited in the number of hours per month (or per session for basic users). So they'll be able to join a session, but once their time runs out they'll be bumped. This doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
I do hope that there will be some sort of group plan though, where a Platinum user can start a session and others can pay maybe $5 per month and be allowed to play with their "group leader" (and other group members) for as much time as needed. That would work for band practice, choir practice, and lots of other group activities.
I'm also wondering about the teaching/learning tiers. I don't mind having to be a Platinum subscriber to teach, but it doesn't seem reasonable (or enforceable) to ask a student to be a Gold member if they're only there for a lesson once a week. Perhaps my $5 per month "group" suggestion would work for this purpose as well: we could establish a group for our students and they could pay for that tier or more if they chose.
Cindy Harris
Pittsburgh, PA Other than being "bumped", the fact that lower tier participants will be limited in their audio stream bitrate would likely affect everyones listening quality.
Can I get confirmation that if I have a Silver or gold subscription and I create an open session where three or four 'free' members join, the free members will be kicked out of the session after an hour? Thanks...
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