This project delved into the depths of Spotify's business, exploring innovative ways to enhance music discovery through artist collaborations. We adopted the perspective of the Spotify design team to envision the platform's next level. This journey was filled with creativity, challenges, and invaluable teamwork.
ABOUT
Launched in 2008 a Swedish audio streaming and media service provider
VISION
Unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it.
MISSION
Their mission is to provide the world's best audio discovery platform, connecting creators and listeners.
Spotify's Business
Reactive Approach: Spotify relinquishes control over what listeners hear, relying on algorithms to create personalized playlists for users.
Channels: Discuss the various channels used by Spotify and their specific targets.
Targets:
Musicians: Spotify's current primary target, as they are the main content creators for the platform.
Visual Artists: Our proposed new target to generate innovative and creative content, enhancing music discovery through visual elements.
Listeners: The core audience that generates revenue for Spotify.
Spotify uses its well developed algorithm and provides strong insights that is based off listeners data, such as the type of songs they listen to, the number of seconds it takes for them to skip a song and uses these data to generate better content for them.
Apple and YouTube music are also finding ways to boost user's experience from the content that they are consuming to how they are consuming and discovering it be it through audio forms or video form.
Some of the opportunities that we see for Spotify was to create more interesting content for listeners and one of the potential way of doing that is by enhancing artist collaboration.
Make discovering new music more enjoyable
By bringing artists (musicians & visual artists) together
To inspire fresh and creative content
Our main goal seeks to make discovering new music more enjoyable by bringing artists together to inspire fresh and creative content.
Company:
As Spotify faces intense competition, they would need to continue to create new ways for listeners to discover music so that they will continue to be listeners top streaming platform choice in the future.
As Spotify faces intense competition, they would need to continue to create new ways for listeners to discover music so that they will continue to be listeners top streaming platform choice in the future.
For their artist :
For Spotify to continue to be listener's top choice, we understood that the quality of the music needs to be there as well. In which the basis of these content created comes from the artists which is why, spotify innovate and find ways to help artists to create new and attractive content for listeners as music and songs can become outdated.
For Spotify to continue to be listener's top choice, we understood that the quality of the music needs to be there as well. In which the basis of these content created comes from the artists which is why, spotify innovate and find ways to help artists to create new and attractive content for listeners as music and songs can become outdated.
For their listeners:
By doing so they make exploring music more enjoyable with more quality content and will have a higher chance to convert freemium users to premium users which is also their source of revenue.
By doing so they make exploring music more enjoyable with more quality content and will have a higher chance to convert freemium users to premium users which is also their source of revenue.
TIMELINE OF MUSIC discovery
In the past, people discovered music through many physical forms such as going to record stores or buying CDs, often than not they would be influenced to purchase by watching MTV videos.
In the present, with technological involvement, music discovery was more digitised with streaming services such as Spotify providing user generated content (aka algorithm).
As we look at Spotify's initiatives along the way, we forecast the probable future could involve interactive visual to help listeners discover more exclusive audio content on Spotify.
Recent Spotify updates
Spotify Daylist
Firstly Spotify Daylist, which uses algorithms to determine a listener playlist based off the time of day. The incorporation of gradient visuals can be shared on socials media as- screenshot, stickers and share-cards customised to one liking and preferences.
However this is a limited access feature only available in US, Canada, UK and Australia.
This is an opportunity to share enticing visuals to prompts viewers to explore playlists and discover new music.
Spotify Island Roblox
Next, we have Spotify Island Roblox, a collaboration between Spotify and Roblox, a popular online game. This is an immersive audio experience that explores sounds and creates music at virtual beat-maker stations powered by Soundtrap.
Through Spotify Island, we create new opportunities for artists to connect with fans and partner with Spotify to use visuals as the first step of discovering new audio content.
This is just an example of how interactive visuals are able to engaging listeners in the discovery of new music.
However this experience is limited to Roblox and not accessible to all listeners due to the campaign's targeted outreach.
Enhancing Stories - Provides visual meaning to a song’s narrative. Create an unexpected story that listeners may have never imagined.
Evoking Emotions - Inspires one's mood, evoke memories, and provide comfort. Deepen
our emotional response to music.
our emotional response to music.
Recalling Information - Visuals more easily remembered compared to words. Makes the artist and album more recognizable and memorable.
which is why we introduced visual artist into Spotify to enhance the experience of music discovery
Introducing Spotify ArtSync
An app feature to enhance your music discovery experience on Spotify
we'll be starting from the basis of the content created, the artist app followed by how it is being featured in the main app and finally the yearly showcase.
To ensure that new exclusive content is being created, the new spotify artist app feature aims to encourage artist collaboration so as to create fresh content.
In order to entice artists to collaborate, we'll be creating a swiping feature where artists can share a sneak peak of their works, giving other artists the option to chose to collaborated with them or not.
The new chat function will be the main channel for their communication. How they will choose to work on their collaboration will be up to them as we do not want to restrict them to a structured process.
Over the year, artists and musicians will collaborate together and post their works on the Spotify main app.
to encourage a new way of music discovery, we decided to incorporate a daily story feature, that would capture the behind the scenes of the collaboration works, to intrigue listeners to tune in and watch their favorite artists collab, and at the same time listen to the new song.
This feature will be available on both premium and freemium, however, the freemium user would encounter ads interruption, advertising on the yearly showcase on Spotify. This is to encourage them to chose Spotify premium so that they are able to fully access new contents.
At the end of the year, Spotify will generate the top artist collaboration (Top 5 collaborations selected are not according to any genre but purely based on streams).
The reason being we want users to break out from the algorithm so that they are able to discover new music at least once in the year instead of only having their own generated playlist that is formed by their recommendation algorithm.
This will be showcased on Spotify's main app feature (collab rooms).
Every room will showcase 1 collaboration (1 musician + 1 artist work)
listeners can press on the room to explore and interact with the collaboration work, here they can also find information about the works and the artists who were involved.
By this listeners are able to come off their usual gerner and find out what are other people listening to most.
Artists are able to discover other artists' works and collaborate, through which they can find inspiration to create new content for listeners.
SUMMARY
Our new app element will be featured on the Spotify artist app.
The collaboration content created will be promoted on the main streaming app.
Leading to the yearly showcase that would encourage listeners to break out of their algorithm and listen to fresh content by presenting them with new forms of music discovery.
Through this there is more consumption of music. listening are exposed to new content and artists are able to explore more collaboration works and build new connections with other artists leading to more collaborations and fresh content for listeners to discover. And the cycle continues!