Spotify
Discovering & Supporting Artists
Overview
Spotify is a subscription-based digital music platform. The platform provides listeners access to millions of songs by artists all over the world. This was a solo project I did during my course at Academy Xi.
Role
UX/UI Designer
User Research, User Interview, Rapid Prototyping, Wireframing, Usability Testing
Background
At the beginning of the process, my objective was simply to dive deep into the problem space of the artists, listeners, and Spotify as a business.
Project Objectives
The objective was to identify and solve the pain points of both listeners and artists respectively, but focusing on each group’s overlaping pain points. The purpose of this was to then enhance users’ experience on Spotify, leading to an increase in active streamers on the Spotify platform.
Discover
Research
Competitor Analysis (Desktop Research):
Spotify is the leading digital music platform with 130 million subscribers, with Apple Music being the second most popular with 60 million subscribers. At the outset, Spotify's key difference in comparison to other digital music platforms was their recommended playlist function. Apple Music, however, has since added an identical function
In terms of its royalties system for its artists, Apple Music’s streaming rate is USD 0.00675, whereas Spotify’s streaming rate is approximately half at USD 0.00348. In comparison with other smaller digital music platforms, such as Soundcloud and Bandcamp, these smaller platforms pay a higher rate than both Apple Music and Spotify. Many artists felt very unsatisfied with the amount of royalties they were receiving from Spotify
Collected data on Spotify reviews, both on Apple App Store and Google Play Store, using dataminer. Reviews mentioned many pain points, including “too many ads”, “bugs on the app” and “not being able to find songs [on the app]”. Notably, 2 pain points were continually repeated: issues with the Spotify algorithm and the lack of artists’ royalties
Survey (quantitative and qualitative interview)
Quantitative Survey
I conducted an online survey to find out people’s behaviour on digital music streaming platforms. Some of the questions asked were: which digital audio platform do they predominantly use, how many hours daily do they spend on the platform, where and when do they use it, price point. 77 people responded to the survey and some of the key insights are on the slideshow below. I sent out another online survey to artists. I asked similar questions in regards to their behaviours with digital music platforms, particularly Spotify
Qualitative Interview
I did a total of 8 qualitative interviews (2 artists and 6 Spotify users). Qualitative interviews provided deeper insights about listeners' and artists’ pain points
The results of the survey can be found below:
Define
Affinity Map
After finishing these interviews, and ultimately the Discover process, we are now at the Defining stage. I could see that there are certain problems shared by listeners and artists respectively.
There were a lot of pain points, however, I came back to the aim of this project which was to find out about the overlapping pain points of both of the listeners' and artists’. By synthesizing the affinity map, I was able to define the problems of both listeners and artists:
Listeners want to discover more music and artists want to be discovered by listeners, a better improved algorithmn
Listeners are aware of the lack of royalties for the artists and artists want a better income systems for their music on Spotify
Personas & Customer Journey Maps
2 pesonas were made:
Abbey, 25 years old (Digital Marketing Strategist)
Daniel, 29 years old (Emerging Artist)
From these 2 personas, a customer journey map was made, showing how Abbey and Daniel interact in Spotify.
Abbey starts the day commuting to work in the morning. Sitting on the bus, she wants to discover new, unfound songs. In trying to do this though, she finds that Spotify is lacking an intuitive discover function. Her commute is short, she gets off the bus and abandons Spotify. Abbey walks into the office feeling frustrated not listening to music on her journey. Had Spotify had a more intuitive discovery function, Daniel the new uprising artist could have been potentially discovered by Abbey.
Problem Statement
A young professional listens to music on her commute to work finds it hard to discover new music/artist that is relevant to her taste on Spotify’s discover page.
Develop
Ideation Workshop
I facilitated 2 Crazy 8’s workshops to brainstorm How Might We’s with 2 group of friends came for different background (banker, lawyer, marketing specialist, compliance, engineer and developer).
How might we better expose Daniel’s music for it be to discovered by more listeners such as Abbey?
How might we help Daniel to earn better on the platform?
Ideation Workshop
I facilitated 2 Crazy 8’s workshops to brainstorm How Might We’s with 2 group of friends
From our Crazy 8’s workshops, we decided our MVP based “high impact and less effort” and the MVPs are:
Search by hashtags
Unending artists/music pages to discover
Enabling users to donate/support artists financially
Allow users to listen to the song at its climax point (preview)
Deliver
Lo-fi to Hi-fi Prototye
User flow and lo-fi were made before moving on to another lo-fi version to do the first usability testing. Lo-fi was made to check if the functionality is intuitive but I found that it is not the most effective to do usability testing for this project. Then I conducted another round of usability testing in hi-fi and test users were able to provide a deeper and detailed feedback which in result to further iterations of the prototype.
5 iterations were made during usability testings across 6 people. The changes made were the following:
The word ‘Donate’ does not sound congruent with Spotify
Keep the original Spotify playlist discovery page and add the ‘Song’ option on the discovery page
UI button to play preview isn’t clear
Back button on all pages
‘History’ and ‘Home’ button function on the navigation are not clear what it does
Clearer UI ‘swipe’ on discovery
Choice of ‘Playlist’ or ‘Songs’ discovery (built on existing Spotify)
Song plays automatically when swiping through the new ‘Discovery page’
Final Prototype
Below is the final prototype created which include the new MVPs:
Search by #hashtags
Discover music page through intuitive swipe and preview of the song
Support option to make a donation for the artists
Customer Future Journey Map
Abbey’s pain point for not being able to find new unfound songs intuitively is now solved by the new MVPs (search by #hashtags and the new discover music page) which allows Daniel to have a higher chance in being discovered. The new ‘Support’ button allows Abbey to support Daniel an emergting artist financially. Finally, the search hashtags are great for Daniel to ‘categorised’ his type of music and targeting listeners who are looking for a particular type of genre or mood. Abbey can now do all that efficiently and intuitively during her commute.
Next Steps
The next steps I would need to undertake are:
Conduct more usability testing for the new MVP's flow
Research more about ‘Support’ for artists to be more compelling
Research and design from the artists’ page when uploading new songs where hashtags could apply
Research about ‘Voice Search’ especially if it is feasible by Developers team
Results
6/6 said the new ‘Discovery’ page and the #hashtag search are intuitive and make discovering new unfound songs more enganging
3/6 said would happily support artists especially the uprising one
Why are these features important for the business?
Remain competitive. Many other music platforms are replicating Spotify’s features. Therefore, it is important to remain competitive. We do this by listening to users’ feedback, empathising and iterating to create a better product
Artist retention. It is important to retain artists on Spotify but at the same time to ensure Spotify is financially sustainable. The ‘support’ button gives listeners the opportunity to make financial contributions to their chosen artists
Customer retention. The new feature allows listeners to discover upcoming artists, and for upcoming artists to be discovered. This increases user engagement and contributes to retaining listeners and artists on the platform
Personal Takeaways
Importance of research. Intensive research really helps to identify the problem. This is important as the project can then be easily optimised and focused in solving the problem through many iterations and usability testing.
Importance of UI. User Interface is still an important part as a UX Designers. I found designing the User Interface to look as beautiful as possible during the hi-fi usability testing makes it convenient for users to give feedback in detail
Time management. I learnt time management is one of the most important skill to have when doing a sprint like this. To do this effectively is important to priotise task lists and execute according to its importance.