i will admit the free version is very generous but as others have mentioned the paid one is kinda pricey 7$ month for the full collection of sounds is kinda much i don’t think this app will be as successful for user and developers if the price doesn’t change and make a one time purchase option that’s 35$ or monthly cost like 4$ I ALSO HATE MONTHLY SERVICES and yearly in a comparison cost about the same as dnd beyond master tier which is 55$ while pocket bard is 50$ it’s not a good business model even though they say it is i see other tabletops tools like tale spires add one time purchase options and succeed off of it
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Developer Response
Thanks for reaching out to share your feedback.
I wanted to begin by acknowledging the validity to your sentiments. As someone who personally juggles with far too many subscriptions, I completely understand how you feel. We have a full explanation from our CEO as to why we chose this model, which you can find on our Discord:
https://discord.com/channels/982003221897838703/1105206613834465281/1170112981187702934
In short, we are an incredibly small team - comprising less than 10 core members. At this stage in our development as a company, we found this to be one of the only reliable ways to grow our business.
Because we know that this model is not for everyone, we are committed to making the Free experience of Pocket Bard robust and full of content. For example, we spent a vast amount of capital in order to provide our brand new Tavern Collection completely free for every single user, just as we did earlier this year by releasing Cave and Dwarven Kingdom free of charge. We hope in doing this, we can excite and expand our current user base, and from there, perhaps we can show users in need of Sci-Fi, Seafaring, Horror, or Desert (4 scenes available now with 4 more soon) music that we have a solution - a subscription that they can cancel at any time! Because we have maintained our commitment to a Customer Focused Approach, this model is also what allows for us to keep Pocket Bard an ad free experience for every one of our users, regardless of subscription status.
I’d also be remised if I didn’t mention that thanks to user feedback concerning our pricing, we would not have made our most recent price change by dropping our yearly subscription to $49.99 per year.
When a user feels skeptical about subscribing, we want to know why that is. We may not necessarily react accordingly to how that user feels, but we believe that understanding where our community is coming from is a crucial element to what makes Pocket Bard a success. This philosophy was conceived to keep us accountable to our users and committed to create the best possible experience. As always, our door is open to discussion! support@pocketbard.app
Thanks again,
Nick Barakos
Customer Support Manager, Pocket Bard LLCI absolutely love this app!
Now, I say this as someone who is only using the free assets (which the developers have been generous with), as I loath subscription services. If ot were a set amoutn for the whole shebang, then i would probably pay it. I just won't pay monthly. Minor rant out of the way, there are so many features that make the already generous free assets even better. The sliders don't affect volume, but the intensity and complexity of the sounds. Genius! I love the way each environment has a collection of background music, so each time you select it, it isn't exactly the same. This is simple to use, quick to use in game, and the quality and variety is spectacular.
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I have used both Syrinscape and RPG Sounds in the past, and eventually settled on just using Shortcuts to trigger various Apple Music playlists.
This app does a lot well, but it really needs AirPlay before it becomes part of my normal gameplay. I have a dual HomePod setup in my game room specifically for ambient sounds, and without the ability to AirPlay, this app feels super lackluster.
Pros: The ‘fading’ between sounds is REALLY well done. I love hitting the Victory button, and the fanfare is added into the music really well at a time that fits perfectly. The “intensity” slider is incredibly interesting, and adds a really nice touch.
Cons: Needs AirPlay. Like, seriously.
Other: It took me entirely too long to realize that the “Location” ambiance was different depending on the scene I was in. A “Tavern” scene would be REALLY welcome as well. Tavern ambiance is probably the most common on that I’m usually playing, and right now it (appears to be) missing.
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Developer Response
This was a really great review for us to read through, thank you for your time! Learning from our users will always be a core principle of Pocket Bard, so your transparency is much appreciated.
As far as Airplay/Chromecast goes, This is feedback we get quite often - and for good reason. We know that many of our users with Chromcast and AirPlay compatible accessories would love to integrate Pocket Bard into their audio systems. Pocket Bard is designed to be a high fidelity experience and we'd love our users to truly get the most out of it. Unfortunately, this is an issue that we cannot at this time circumvent. This is because the audio middleware that we use, which is traditionally used in the video game audio pipeline, is incompatible with AirPlay and Chromecast. We brought this to the attention of this company and they have assured us this is something they intend to fix in the future, and once they do, WiFi casting will be an absolute breeze. We look forward to this update, but our hands are sadly tied for the time being.
In the meantime, we do have a few workarounds. Often times, depending on the device you're using to play Pocket Bard, users are able to mirror their displays to smart home hubs like Smart TVs and Apple TVs. If your audio system is routed through the TV, mirroring your device should also output the audio, and hopefully take advantage of your sound system. This is currently our preferred work-around, but of course, Pocket Bard is currently compatible with all Bluetooth speakers as well.
We apologize for this inconvenience and we hope you stick with us as we work these issues out!
As for Tavern, hang tight. We have wrapped recording of our Tavern Expansion and we could not be more excited to bring it to our community. We're truly proud of what we have made and we hope you look forward to its release later this year!
As always, our door is open. Please let us know if you have any other ideas or feedback! support@pocketbard.app
Thanks again for your review and we look forward to improving!
Excellent music composition, multiple different themes and excellent sound effects that you can control to emphasis a crit or creep out your players. Adds a new dimension to tabletop RPG’s (not just DnD). Also makes great background sound to help get into a more creative mindset when writing adventures, short stories or novels. Probably would work great with other forms of art also, but i can’t speak to that. Easy interface and seamless transitions between musical scores. Crazy impressed, especially after meeting the team of musicians and developers at a con and seeing how much effort and sweat went into building this app.
Edit: make sure to download the fantasy starter pack after you download the app. They are both free and well worth the minimal effort required.
As a side note, I hope the one guy who left a 1 star review gets a job soon and stops taking his financial woes out on a team that is offering an excellent FREE product.
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Developer Response
Hi Kraaahfgth! Thank you so much for leaving this review. I wasn't at the most recent con, but it's so awesome that our team left you with such a positive impression! We love that you're finding Pocket Bard to be an intuitive and powerful audio tool to weave through out your day. We didn't initially create Pocket Bard to be used outside of gaming, but our community has taught us so much in such a short amount of time, and we couldn't be more excited to see how users like you embrace what we've made. As always, please let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback at support@pocketbard.app Happy gaming and we hope you enjoy what we have planned next!I haven’t even used this in a campaign yet and I can already see how much it will add!
This app is incredibly easy to use, the music is catchy without being distracting, it seemly transitions to fit the mood, and the sound effects are perfect for story, exposition and combat!
I do wish they were more sound effects (called “One Shots” in the app, which is a perfect name). things like zapping sounds, freezing sounds, swords clashing, etc..
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Developer Response
Thank you for this review! We're really pleased to receive this feedback. We really appreciate that you shared what kinds of One Shots you'd like to see. Hearing directly from our community continues to be the best way for us to continue to grow and expand Pocket Bard. We can't wait for you to see what's next for our app! Please reach out to us whenever you have any questions or feedback. support@pocketbard.app Again, thank you for your vote of confidence, and we hope you continue to enjoy Pocket Bard!I am absolutely in love with this app. The seamless transitions and customization offered right out of the gate are unbelievably robust. Not only does this drastically upgrade the tone and feel of our games, but I find myself throwing on a low intensity setting just for some background music at the house. I cannot recommend this app enough 👍🏻👍🏻
BTW, having an app so beautifully crafted that works so well WITHOUT ADS is a thing of beauty and joy in this day and age. Really hoping to be able to buy more content piecemeal as I need it because I really want to support the app under its fantastic model right now.
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Developer Response
Thank you so much for this review! We're pleased to hear that you're using Pocket Bard not only for your games, but also just around the house as background noise! It's our goal to never introduce adds to the Pocket Bard experience, but we also want to ensure that we offer all users Fantasy content free of charge. To do this, we determined that a subscription model was necessary. Our CEO Alex has a statement concerning this model, please reach out to us at support@pocketbard.app if you'd like to inquire about this! Either way, we hope that you continue to enjoy Pocket Bard however you choose! Please reach out again if you have any other feedback, ideas, or suggestions!Update: Thank you dev team for responding to so many people in the reviews. I love the hands on approach and listening to your customers. Maybe people don’t usually ask for this but I would LOVE to see more paid packs. I currently (and I’m sure others as well) don’t have use for a sci-fi pack but plan to get it anyways to support the app. Currently am running a pirate campaign with many beach themes. Would love to see some more tropical themes. Even if not more packs where we can support you would be awesome
I use this app every single session now. I swapped to this from recording my own custom music and my life is so much easier. There is a lot of content in this app but please don’t abandon this thing. I’ve seen that before and I want this app to keep growing.
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Developer Response
Hi JimmyJortz! Thank you so much for this kind review. We're so happy that you're enjoying Pocket Bard! Our team is pouring hours of hard work, soul, and creativity into making this app. And we do mean making - we feel like our journey is only getting started. We have so much content planned, both for our free users and our subscribers. We see Pocket Bard as a labor of love. It's our vision that our users experience what you've told us: an ability to add an immersive layer to their games and lives, and make that immersion as easy as possible. We hope you enjoy and stick around to see what we have coming next!This app makes running music almost completely thoughtless, and it sounds leagues better than the times I’ve really tried to be mindful of sound.
Somehow the music doesn’t get grating even after long combat encounters. Worst case scenario you decide to just change the theme and it transitions between the songs in a way that is so subtle that I don’t think you would notice it unless you knew the buttons were pressed.
This is easily one of the best music platforms for GMing games.
My only gripe is there aren’t as many scenes as I would like to see.
If we were able to either 1: import our own music and create custom scenes
or 2: The devs added more music (I would be willing to pay more with more selection)
then this app would be indisputably the best sound board for running games.
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Developer Response
Hi Todd, thank you so much for taking the time to write this review. Your words are truly exciting for us to read. For one, we love when passionate people find Pocket Bard and use it to enhance their gaming experiences. We've put collectively thousands of hours into orchestrations, code writing sessions, and effort all to make this immersive audio app seamless and powerful. Knowing that there are users like you who are behind our goal is very encouraging. And secondly, we are encouraged by your "gripe" because we are planning on adding tons of new music and sounds to the Pocket Bard experience. We know that we are just getting started, and we hope you stick with us as our collection of music continues to span across even more genres and locations. We believe learning from our users is paramount to our goals, so please reach out to us directly with any future suggestions, feedback, issues, or encouragement! Thank you again for this review, and we hope you enjoy using Pocket Bard! -NickLove this app so far! The UI is intuitive, each scene is uniformly laid out, and it’s quick and easy to pick up and go. As a DM, there is a lot of moving parts behind the screen, so I greatly appreciate that I can quickly change the tone of the scene at a glance rather than digging through the app to find what I’m looking for.
This would be 5 stars; however, the subscription price is a bit steep. As a consumer, I am definitely suffering from subscription fatigue. I’d much rather buy access outright or buy scenes that make sense for my campaign.
From a business standpoint, I totally get it. A subscription based model makes sense as it’s continual income from multiple sources on a regular basis. Unfortunately, from a consumer standpoint, I hesitate to take on yet another subscription in a world where every business has made subscriptions their default business model.
To the developers, keep up the awesome work! I’m excited to see this platform grow!
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Developer Response
Hi Coasty! Thank you very much for taking the time to write this review. We really appreciate your honesty in letting us know where you're coming from. We absolutely understand how you feel about the subscription. As someone who personally suffers from similar fatigue, I get the feeling that comes with seeing yet another monthly bill. You certainly alluded to it in this review, but if you'd like to further understand where we're coming from a business standpoint, our CEO Alex has a pinned post about this business model in our Discord.
In short, we absolutely want Pocket Bard to stand on its own as a free immersive audio experience for everyone's Fantasy needs! In order to do this, the subscription exists to supplement and expand that experience into different genres. We know that we have a long way to go before we've covered everything, so there is absolutely no pressure to subscribe until you feel like it's worth it! Just know that when you subscribe, that money, along with going to a small and dedicated team, goes toward the resources that allow us to provide and expand the free offerings of the app as well! Speaking of which, we have a ton of new content both for subscribers and free users just around the corner. We are open to suggestions, so if there are sounds that you feel like should be part of the free experience, we'd love to hear from you: support@pocketbard.app We hope that these continuous additions in content and improvements in UI keep you with us on this journey!I just found out about this today and I INSTANTLY bought a year subscription!!!! The ingenuity is absolutely mind boggling and I love the “intensity” feature. It’s really awesome hearing the arrangement subtly change from pizzicato strings to a full symphonic orchestra with horns with just a slide of one option. I run a few D&D campaigns and even have my own home brew world. We have a session tomorrow and I CANT WAIT to use this ❤️ thanks so much devs and keep up the stellar work! Let me know if you need an arranger or audio engineer 🙏
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Developer Response
Hi there! Thank you so very much for your support! We truly love when our users can see the sweat and tears we put into this app - it's not only validating, but it confirms that all the hard work is worth it! We can absolutely promise you that you made a wise choice by choosing to subscribe to Pocket Bard. We have tons of new content just around the corner and we hope you enjoy the expanded library at your fingertips! Please know that you can always reach out with any questions or feedback at support@pocketbard.app Again, thank you so much in believing in our vision - we will do everything possible to make this app the very best it can be! (ps, we're not currently hiring, but if you'd like to send your portfolio to the email above, we'd be happy to keep it for our the future!)
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