Observations On The Latest Vocal Upgrade

Introduction

Vocal has put a lot of work into adding new features to the platform. These are my thoughts on them.

I know a lot of Vocal Creaors and Vocal themselves will disagree with me but I feel I have to make these points. I would love to know what your thoughts are.

The music I have included is Steve Hillage's take on The Beatles' "Getting Better" because with these upgrades Vocal is significantly improving.

Here is the release story (where you can see my comments)

One of the things that you have to do with critical observations is you have to give a reason for them and offer an alternative.

I have just had to rewrite the above paragraph because of the Vocal Editor's ridiculous initial autosave feature which has lost me quite a bit of time over the years. I know I should wait for it but I do forget, like today.

Remember we have quite a few useful features available on the side menu:

So here are my thoughts on the new features.

Saved Stories

This is an excellent idea. Check it out.

My only worry is that you dip into a story, save it and that is registered as the initial read, but it is not enough to register a Vocal read for you.

When you come back it is classed as a second read so the Creator may end up receiving nothing for the read. Vocal should clarify this.

I use the "Stories You Liked" to revisit previous stories.

Homepage Story Feed

This is the one I have a big issue with. On the Vocal Home page, this is the fifth inclusion of a publication feed. There are two on the "Your Subscriptions", then there is the Notifications, then there is Latest Stories, and now this. This is the top of my Subscription Feed, I don't need any more:

So to me, this is a total waste of resources, but you can check my constructive dialogue with Justin in the article but here's a screenshot:

Highlighting Subscribed Creators

Another addition to the Vocal Home Page that I believe is unnecessary as the Subscription Feed already provides this.

The justification for this is that two clicks to access the Subscription Feed is is too much for Vocal Creators. That argument could be used to justify anything, but I doubt I will be using the Vocal Home page, and every time I click on it it grates with me.

Paid Subscriptions

There is talk of this and pledges, but to me this is at odds with the Vocal model. I pay my $10 a month and that allows me to share my work that everyone can read for free.

This is one of the reasons I virtually never publish on Medium any more because often stories are stopped for non-members.

I have 877 Subscribers but I doubt one of them would pay to read my work and similarly, if a Vocal Creator needed money from me to read their work, I would unsubscribe.

There are sites like Patreon and Only Fans where content can require paid subscriptions, and the only reason people pay is because the content is a bit specialised and not for public consumption.

I publish hard copy anthologies of my work and I see that similar to a paid subscription.

And we can always give each other tips to show our appreciation. I usually drop dollar tips to brand-new Vocal Creators and for my Monthly Challenges in VSS.

Conclusions And Stuff

These are my thoughts on the latest upgrade. I do wish Vocal would fix their stats or at least add a read count to individual stories, but maybe that will happen one day.

Thank you for reading and I would love to hear what you think.