Beam: Powered by Arc

I am returning as a third year member in a band that has used Beam for my first two years. I was confused to find that all of the “old” Beam had been ported over to a new fangled app. Furthermore, it’s sad to see that this new app clearly had very little to no input from the actual musicians who used the original Beam app. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! The old Beam was streamlined, utilitarian, and just what it needed to be. This app attempts to replicate that but misses the mark. A few critical issues that make this app inconvenient to use. - All of the parts I had downloaded on the previous Beam app are lost, I have to redownload each one. - There is a “download all parts” button in settings. Helpful, but not at the same time. I am a musician who plays one instrument in my band, I just need to download my parts, not all of them. Don’t want to use up storage space for no reason. - The save zoom feature does not work. It claims to save my viewed area and zoom. It saves the zoom but scrolls back to the top of the music when I close and reopen. - The giant black bar on the bottom of the music for navigating pages is clunky and distracting. It’s much worse than the side buttons on the previous version of Beam and it makes it harder to read my music. - Making the menus pop up when I’m in a piece of music is confusingly difficult. It seems I have to tap multiple times for the menu to appear. - When I’m navigating songs within a setlist, the menu sometimes won’t even pop up. I have to close the app and reopen to exit the setlist. - The collections menu invites me to “click the + button” to create a new collection. There is no plus button. - Live mode claims to be “coming in a future update.” This is a crucial feature of the app that should be added ASAP! - Settings has a typo. “Your Organazation.” How rushed was the release of this app? These are just a few items I noticed from quickly tapping around the app. These issues must be addressed promptly or my band season will be severely hindered by a clunky app. New Beam, get back to the roots of the old Beam app before it’s too late.

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