SubJam’s Apple-iOS-early-early-buggy-crashy-beta 😉 has landed!
To get it, just fill out this form.
Once you do that, just follow these few easy steps:
- Accept the email invitation from “Apple Developer” with the subject, “You’re invited to join a development team.” as soon as possible (it expires within 3 days.)
- You’ll be guided to install TestFlight, the official Apple beta testing app.
- From there you’ll install and open the SubJam beta app.
- Create a new account and fill out your profile.
Now you can start playing around! Start a live broadcast, listen to a live broadcast, or a previously recorded one if nobody is currently live. Subscribe to other users by selecting our profiles wherever you see us and tapping the blue “Subscribe” button. That way we can test notifications when anyone goes live. If you have time, test out all of the features you see: Push all the buttons, change all the things! Let us know what works and what doesn’t by shooting us bug reports right from TestFlight.
Musicians & artists: Every time you do a live broadcast, it helps build our content library. This is a really cool opportunity for you to be showcased as one of the very first artists to ever stream on SubJam. And if/when we when grow to be a global phenomenon, you’ll become SubJam legends!
Right now, the global SubJam community is one big scene. Once you’re able to create and join new scenes (see below), every artist who has helped us jump start our beta by livestreaming will be commemorated in very special ways throughout our entire project’s life (which we aim to be for a very, very, long time.)
Fans: There’s no reason you can’t do a live broadcast too, we encourage all of our users to broadcast! Talk about the bands, artists and music you’re excited about locally, the shows you’ve been to and anything else music related. Play some great music from your area! (Just please don’t stream copyrighted music without the copyright holders’ permission.) You will also gain very special recognition on the platform for helping us with these first releases.
Venues: You’re highly encouraged to stream, too! Talk about your upcoming shows, do impromptu performance broadcasts with guests, shout out your offerings. Your streams will be available in the “Recorded” section after you’re done. We won’t forget you when it comes to special perks when we’re huge! We have some very cool ideas to ensure your legend status is known on SubJam.
Local businesses: You’re just as much a part of the music scene as anyone. Instrument and retail music stores, recording and rehearsal studios, music schools and instructors, labels, promoters, talent buyers, booking agents, sound and lighting engineers, local diners that stay open late, t-shirt shops and anyone else who supports local music… we welcome you to be a part of our platform. Broadcast your offerings for the scene to hear! Right now your streams will be heard by everyone who looks in the “Recorded” section. Once we build scene functionality in, you’ll be able to target your audience by scene. Our vision is for businesses to add to, not subtract from, the user experience. Your creativity with streaming on SubJam will set us apart from every other platform on the Internet. We encourage users to support local business who hang out with us while we all immerse ourselves in our favorite live music scenes. We’re all in this together!
A note regarding respect on the platform: Speaking of being in this together, one of our most important goals is to encourage users to treat each other with the utmost of respect and encouragement, full stop. As long as you love music, we’re all going to have a lot of fun together here!
What can I do on the app right now?
SubJam’s first beta release has very basic 1-way communication (kind of like radio). There are streamers, and there are listeners. 🙂
When you start an audio livestream, users who have subscribed to you will be notified instantly. That way they can tune in to your broadcast immediately. Others will find you in the “Live” section when they open the app. So have fun with it! Play some music, talk about the local shows in your town, do whatever (we’re easy as long as the general focus is music.) Once your broadcast is finished, its recording will appear in the “Recorded” section for anyone to listen to at a later time (but don’t worry, you can delete it if you want to!)
About Our funding situation:
With your help, we’ll be implementing more core features like audio interaction and creating/joining scenes, but we’re just not there yet. It all depends on how quickly we’re able to attain our next round of funding.
Truth be told, we are on shaky ground financially; I (Jordan) have put more than what I have to get what we’ve got right now. I know what we’re doing has a lot of potential to make big impact on a cultural level, and anyone who knows me personally knows that SubJam has been my life, passion, and more-than-full-time job for the past 3 years. I want to be able to continue to work on this platform full time and continue to pay my awesome developers, hosting fees, and other business expenses. I need to do this without worrying about whether or not I can keep my family fed and sheltered in the next months. Right now is the perfect time for an influx of funding to keep us moving forward!
Further development depends on how many people like you we can rally together behind it. So please:
- If you haven’t already, subscribe to our newsletter here: https://subj.am/newsletter/
- Share the news about our first beta on your socials.
- Tell musicians and music fans you know about SubJam. Ask them to sign up for the beta, too.
- Show people the app in person. Seeing is believing!
- Donate, if you’re able to.
We’ve got to show the world that there’s real interest from people like you in what we’re doing, to make this happen for real.
First beta warning: As with any early beta, there are a LOT of rough edges. There will be frequent crashes, text in strange places, things that will randomly break or seem to have never worked at all.
The purpose of this initial beta release is to identify all of the major issues that need to be corrected before we go to the next stages and eventually roll it out to the public. Please be patient, know that this is a work in progress and do your best to report all app crashes (TestFlight makes it easy). All of that info we get from you is key for us to be able to identify and fix everything, and ensure SubJam is solid enough to get positive feedback in the App Store.
Lastly, THANK YOU!!! We’re excited beyond imagination right now for the future.
– Jordan (Founder)