Riyaz updates delayed due to Covid19

Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

Mark Zuckerberg

Hello Riyazers!

First things first. Hearty thanks to each of you from Team Riyaz for getting back with your invaluable feedback on the recent major update to Riyaz. You treated us like family and we’ll respond with nothing less ❤️

That above quote by Mark Zuckerberg, captures our spirits in Team Riyaz. Our team espouses that principle to constantly improve Riyaz factoring in all the feedback we get from you, and do it fast. As a side effect to the speed, there are some bumps along the ride, which are addressed by the team even faster.

This has been the situation under normal circumstances. But these times, like you very well know, are different. Covid19 has impacted everyone of us to some or the other degree. Our team has stood up resilient and continued serving the Riyazers worldwide, while working remotely. But even then, we cannot shield ourselves from the external factors. Google’s Playstore team reviews the updates before they are published. They are severely shorthanded during these times and it is now taking almost 14 days to push an update, which earlier took a couple of hours.

Updates held up due to this delay

Here are some of the updates already developed, and ready to release.

  • Repeat lessons in day wise plans as you’d like to, even after scoring all stars
  • Revise all the lessons from completed day plans
  • Skip lessons which you can’t score well even after considerable effort. Those lessons will be given to you again in the coming day plans
  • Mixing audio tracks (Turning on/off the teacher, tanpura, metronome etc) during practice
  • Issues with Shruti selection for some lessons during practice

We are sure you would understand this reason for delay, and request you to continue sending your feedback. Thank you 🙏🏼


Comments

  1. Good app. A small request. Please keep basic lessons open to all any time so that we can do Riaz of Sa, Saptak, long and short Sa, bollywood songs etc….Thanks

  2. Dear Sir
    This app is very very useful .But My worry is ,I am always trying the same basic lessons.Please
    adopt some qualifying criteria for going to next lesson and finally some sort of exam for each group.For example saarlu swara etc
    At present stage, i am not clear whether I have to go forward or backward.whether I am suitable or not.
    Regards
    G Gopala Krishna
    9963690791

  3. Riyaz was very very beautiful app…sa, saptak long and short sa ,re,ga,ma,paa,DHA,niii the basic lesson. In new version only alankar I practice ,,,how I practice basic notes sa,re,ga,maa,paa,DHA,niii….. please bring basic lessons ,,,

  4. Please try to include these features in the new update, I’m missing these gravely:
    1. Feedback for all sessions point wise(as in older app)
    2. Repeat any lesson on my wish, as many times as I want.
    3. Reset progress feature, day wise and course wise both.
    4. Daily warmup sessions was great.
    And some courses such as basic swaras and building your singing voice are under the course Bilawal Thaat which is a bit confusing for beginners.

    Thank you.

  5. Sir please bring back time tracking back which shows time remaining every time I come out of lessons and notify when I complete 30 min of practice.

  6. Thank you so much Sir.
    Its very helpful app for music learner.I am very happy.
    Thanks once again to you sir🙏

  7. It’s perfect app for those who want to learn our Indian classical song. it’s very useful or better in that not any dought

  8. Thank you very much sir.
    Riyas is a beautiful as well as helpful aap for swar music learners. In my busy schedule I practice it and develop my skills as a beginner. I found what I needed. Plz include old version with it so that it helps us in many ways.

  9. I would like to practice singing old film songs of Golden Era as well as light gazals of Jagjit Singh.

  10. Hi, I have sent couple of questions by WhatsApp but there is no reply. It’s the same number I used when I subscribed to your app, so I know it’s the right number. Could you please get back to me.

  11. This update really should not have been released, it’s not even a beta release, it had so many bugs and issues. As a paying subscriber I’m really disappointed that the team thought it was suitable for release when it so clearly was not.

    To start with the new UI is confusing. The old one wasn’t great but it was better than this.

    There were so many small bugs at first, loads of them really obvious and should have been easy to pick up in testing. Individual lesson scores have been lost forever. But the biggest one for me is the removal of the lesson review and scoring as you practiced. This was the app’s USP and the reason I chose to pay for a subscription and now it’s just gone. That’s really not acceptable.

    Please don’t hide behind the Zuckerberg quote. You messed up and should have tested your software more thoroughly (or at all!) before releasing.

    Why don’t you start a beta channel on the play store so people can test unfinished software, before general release?

    You have lost a lot of my confidence and it will take a lot to get it back. At this point in time I definitely will not be renewing.

    1. Hi John

      Thanks for writing. Despite our best effort, a few issues invariably slip through to the production release. We usually fix those as soon as within 24 hours of initial partial rollout for those to be even see the light of the day.

      The current delay in subsequent bug-fix releases is what made a huge dent in our plans for this major update. Your suggestion to have a beta channel on play store could have saved us from these delays and the resulting pain for some of our customers. We’ll duly do this and invite interested users to it.

      We live by the principle of moving fast. To us, it is not a mere quote by someone. Zuckerberg just happened to be the person who was noticed saying it loud enough and practicing it hard. So no tracing back on that 🙂

  12. I had requested regarding Carnatic section earlier :(1) playback be enabled so that one could play back one’s attempt
    (2) Darker background like n the earlier vrsion so that one could see the feedback, swaras,sahityas and time trace to see one’s pitch clearly
    I request that this be done for the new version of structured lessons as well as the old styled a la carte lessons also.
    Furthermore are there any lessons to teach tala being planned?
    Ram

    1. Mr Koduri,
      Please refer to my message above.
      Please note that due to the light background it is becoming difficult to read the swaras etc., as it is very faint and my eyes are getting strained. Please try to release the update ASAP as that will be a great help.
      Ram

  13. Mixing audio tracks (Turning on/off the teacher, tanpura, metronome etc) during practice

    Above feature is still missing , it was mentioned in your earlier post

  14. More than 10 days have passed since this topic had been posted and we are still waiting for the update.
    As a paid user of the app it’s now becoming a concern.
    Can we really depend on the development team who decided to release this worst new version without any real quality checking? Or they thought it was good enough?
    Secondly, some of the apps I frequently use have released their updates two or three times in the last two weeks whereas Riyaz released their last update more than 20 days back. Isn’t that weird? Or Google Play Store team is dealing with them differently?
    I’m really worried now. My subscription is about to end and I’m seriously thinking if I should renew it or not.

    1. I just learnt that Riyaz team has publishes the latest version of the app on their website because Google is delaying the release of the update on the Play Store. This is a great step indeed. I’m so very happy to see this thoughtful action from the team. THANK YOU SO MUCH ❤❤❤

  15. I have installed and tried the latest update ver. 50.0.12. The five changes and fixes mentioned above are not completely present in the update. Only ‘Revise’ option and ‘Skip Lesson’ option have been incorporated but still no sign of other important fixes.
    When are you going to fix them?

    1. Hi Subha

      Thank you for installing it. All these issues should be released in that build – 50.0.12. Can you please point us to the behaviour which you still see as unfixed?

  16. Hi Gopala,
    Yeah sure, let me go point wise as mentioned in the main post above.
    1) Repeat lessons in day wise plans – WORKING FINE.

    2) Revise all the lessons from completed day plans – WORKING FINE with the newly introduced “Revise” button.

    3) Skip lessons which you can’t score well – I can skip a lesson within a particular Day Plan only but the app still restricts me to go for the next Day Plan if any lesson from the previous Day Plan is skipped.

    4) Mixing audio tracks (Turning on/off the teacher, tanpura, metronome etc) during practice – CAN’T FIND IT ANYWHERE. I have searched every possible corner but this options are not there.

    5) Issues with Shruti selection for some lessons during practice – Didn’t face this problem ever.

    NOTE: I mentioned you about a Tempo Control feature in the other post which you said to be in your pipeline already but it’s not there in this update. Maybe it’s coming later.

    Thanks

    1. Thanks Subha.

      3) You will be allowed to go to next days plan by skipping lessons in current day.

      Once you mark a lesson to be skipped, it will not occur in that practice session again. Should you practice the same day again, the algorithm gives you a fair chance to try that lesson again, and if you face difficulty even then, you can skip it again.

      Once other lessons are complete (you have at least one star), you’ll be allowed to move ahead to next day’s plan. If this is not the case, we’ll look at your logs and see what is happening in your specific account. For 4 of us who just tested it, it worked fine.

      4) The changelog of 50.0.12 does not have this. This change was in another branch which is also waiting to be rolled out. Since you asked, we’ll push an apk update of that branch too on our website tonight 🙂

      Our engineers are working on the tempo feature, but it needs a bit more time as the audio gets distorted quite a bit on bigger tempo changes and it needs some work there.

      1. Hey Gopala,
        Yes, I totaly agree with your reply. However the problem I’m facing is I’m stuck at the last exercise of Day 20 in Bilawal Thaat. I cannot score a single star here. In fact I’m not able to sing it completely because of its complicated pattern and a high tempo. So I cannot move to the next Day Plan.
        What should I do?

  17. Hi,
    One of my friends uses the free version of Riyaz who got an update yesterday on Play Store. This update has got some added features like 2min Warp Up, Audio Mixing etc. However, my Play Store is not showing any such update. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app but that didn’t work either.
    Where is the problem? Please help me out.

    1. Hi Subha

      This update is on partial rollout and hence part of the user base (random selection by play store) gets it. We’ll increase the rollout to 100% as soon as our engineers see that the release is without any issues.

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