First, the important part: we’re reading all of it. Every email, every post, every “who approved this” comment.
Behind the redesign are the same designers who’ve worked on Songsterr from the start, and they are doing their best to fix and improve things.
The most useful feedback is specific: what you were doing, what you expected, and what got in the way. Screenshots help a lot.
Keep it coming 🤘
one is clearly more confusing than the other. The old layout has all the options right in front of me while this new layout requires me to pull up a tab and look through rows of different icons with no text to explain what it is. The other layout had an organized flat layout with text explaining what it is. Why am i required to memorize what each picture does?
WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE THIS HOW DO I CHANGE IT BACK
Hey everyone!
I wanted to share a project I'm starting that builds directly on Slopsmith.
I'm a big fan of the Rocksmith-style note highway, and Slopsmith already does a great job with it. While playing around, I noticed that Songsterr has far more songs and tabs than Rocksmith's CDLC catalog. So I thought: what if the highway could run on top of Songsterr?
To get straight to the point, I'm cloning the Slopsmith repo and building a fork that will evolve into a Chrome extension. The extension works over Songsterr's current structure and renders the note highway in the browser. It also lets you switch between Songsterr's synthetic audio and the original recordings, so you get the best of both worlds: the huge catalog, the highway visuals, and the choice of how you hear the song.
Starting from Slopsmith saves me a lot of time, so a big thank you to the people who built it. I'll keep the fork's license and credits intact, and I'm happy to contribute back anything that makes sense upstream.
Wish me luck
Edit: Now available for download at https://github.com/slophighwaydev/slophighway
It probably has performance and a lot of other issues, as it is a first release. That said, I count on you all to keep this going. Have fun!
so like a lot of you (and i) cant stand the new UI. floating bubbles everywhere, pill buttons, and for some reason half the screen is cards hovering over the tab. and they removed the tab author from the header which was honestly the most annoying part (why???)
so i made a chrome extension that restyles songsterr back into something that attempts to recreate the old UI.
v0.3.5 is live! If you installed this prior (v0.2.0), change the extension settings to set Fusion to Classic or reinstall to get the classic theme if its really not there.
\"Legacy\" Theme, default theme for extension inspired from 2018-2020 era. (v0.3.12+)
\"Classic\" Theme, modern, sleek theme from around 2024.
\"Fusion\" Theme, new UI era with classic styling.
install
hit "Add to Chrome" on the store page, then reload your songsterr tab.
works on chrome and probably other chromium browsers (brave, edge etc). settings are in the extension icon. it updates automatically through the store so you dont have to redownload anything when i push fixes
edit
I will do my best to take suggestions, and push updates to chrome web store as soon as possible, though publishing may take time. I will update this post body to include what changed based on user suggestions.
for version 0.3.5:
- Addressed collapse UI issue when expanding or clicking a button.
- Brought back the true old UI layout (as close as possible) with current reskin as a secondary option.
- Ability to change color accents
for version 0.3.11
- added the new "Legacy" theme, inspired by the 2018-2023 era UI (left sidebar, buttons down the right), now the default
- fixed windows (inbox, help, account) opening off screen or animating the wrong way
- added a collapse button for the video/audio player so it stops covering the tab
- prepped for a firefox version, submitting to the firefox add-ons store soon
- small fixes: mixer title sizing, tidied up the settings popup
for version 0.3.12
- addresses many UI issues, like wrong layering, odd placements, window overlapping other UI elements.
Version 0.3.12 is pending as of writing in place of 0.3.11 (updates will jump from 0.3.5 to 0.3.12) that addresses many UI glitches, sorry for the additional wait time.
You’ve herd the feedback, nobody likes it. Please change it back. The desktop website isn’t a freaking mobile UI thats why we use desktop and not our phones
Been a Pro user for years and years now.
The utterly ridiculous UI is just the nail in the coffin.
For a few years now people have been ruining songs constantly. Songs that have been transcribed from users, often professionally, are now changed and tweaked every day for no apparent reason, some in the most ridiculous ways. I suspect they're just fucking around with them with AI mostly.
Anyways, this is no longer worth supporting financially.
Only an AI could have made such a bad UI with these oversized buttons, atrocious menus, etc.; it's just a joke at this point.
Please I beg stop changing shit it's fine the way it is
this is so bad, why did you have to change it ? it was fine and now its this mobile ahh interface
The new UI is 100% ass, how did anyone approve it?
Why do I need my account settings and inbox and shit rihgt in the middle of a song, while the buttons I DO NEED are hidden away in a god awful sub-menu I have to drag to see
Revert the changes or lose a subscription, this is the worst design decision I've seen in years
I am going to link the contact form for those of you who have made your way here but weren't aware that you can submit feedback directly to the developers. Let them know that this GPT-dookie-ass UI will not fly in the faces of paying members.
https://www.songsterr.com/help#contact-us
EDIT: Their response:
>Hi
>I'm from the team that is building the new interface. Thank you for writing in: we read all feedback and requests both on the platforms and in support, and I’ve noted yours down; we’ll discuss it with the team.
>About AI: the new interface was designed by the same designer who worked on all previous versions of the site. He has been on the project since it started, and every decision in the new interface was made manually by him, just as before.
>We won’t be able to bring back the previous design, and there won’t be a switch to the old interface either. But if you can tell us what exactly is causing the issue — which elements seem unnecessary, where centering is missing, what is overlapping the tab — we’ll look into the specific areas. A screenshot with your window size would be very helpful.
Back to me!
I am losing faith extremely quickly, as that email they sent has potential signs itself of AI... I don't believe for a second that the original designer of their UI created this, or at least created this without using AI. (Unless they were held at gun-point and had their job threatened to make this God awful design)
To be clear, I don't even care about the AI usage (to a point), more importantly, the new UI is just flat-out bad. I will be cancelling my membership. I should have never moved from Guitar Pro - and I won't ever move away from them again.
They have also responded to us publicly here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Songsterr/comments/1x0sp45/hey_everyone_songsterr_team_here/
Please let them know exactly how you feel!
I WILL FIND YOU
Not gonna go into why the new ui is bad since I believe everyone agrees it is. Please if you arent gonna roll it back just give the option to use the old UI. If you want to redesign it at least give us the option on if we want to use it.
I dont think anyone likes this new UI. Is there any way to bring back the old one? Maybe there's some way to do it with an extension like Stylish or something?
I work in tech and I was testing Claude Code. So for fun, I basically used it to reskin It's My Tabs and it costed $20 in AI tokens.. I got it to the point where it looks more or less like Songsterr's crap redesign.
I hope it's worth it dev team, spending little to no money on AI Slop and you're losing a ton of customers for it.
I absolutely love songsterr and I think that it's a blessing for Composers, guitarists, bassists, you name it.
But on the other hand, I really can't seem to wrap my head around why they keep making these unnecessary updates To the UI, when it should be common knowledge that they're going to be disruptive to people who use it regularly.
Worst part about it is that there isn't even any new features
(Reposting, because I left something in there that I didn't mean to... 😅)
Yesterday I finally subscribed to Plus, and today I’m greeted by this shit.. 🙃
Anyway, I guess it’s time to fight the vibecoding with vibecoding....
So I had Claude write a little Chrome extension that improves the new UI somewhat. It’s definitely not perfect, but it makes things a bit more usable.
You can download the ZIP here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VP6PsLoB7alzV4IqTS58gf0KqUMCc7bo/view?usp=sharing
songsterr-better-ui-chrome-extension.zip.chrome://extensions, turn on Developer mode, click Load unpacked, and select the songsterr-better-ui folder.That’s it.
If anyone wants to improve it, just throw the code into another AI tool and ask it to change things. With a bit of vibecoding, you can probably get something working in a few minutes.