This is a music product that provides an alternative way for music lovers to discover relatively unknown talented artists and their music from live venues, other individuals and independent groups, rather than from major media and algorithms.
How come this project?
Apple Music, Spotify and other famous music products are more for discovering the music that follows popular music tastes. When I want to avoid this kind of music and find relatively unknown or independent artists and their music, Apple Music and Spotify-like products are not suitable anymore. Without recommendations, the only way to find new artists is by searching by artists' names in these apps. But if I'm fresh in this music area, how can I know their names? However discovering live venues can provide me bunch of names. Then I found more pain points and chances. Here are the main points I'm trying to tackle:
+ Lack of a seamless way to check popular live venues, the performers, and their music. Most music products for live music are designed for selling tickets, instead of exploring artists and their music. Foursquare and Yelp can provide information on good venues, but not for discovering artists or their music.
+ Recommendations are often generated by systems or editors based on the user's taste. However sometimes we need something different from our old tastes.
+ Popular music tastes are controlled by major media and major music labels. Major music labels have more money for promoting their artists in major media. But why should we obey their tastes and preferences?
+ Browsing other cool independent individuals' and groups' musical tastes will be a better alternative for discovering new music.
Users
Music lovers who are more independent and more interested in discovering relatively unknown talented artists and their music.
Design Challenges
+ How to discover relatively unknown talented artists and their music easily?
+ How to get more suitable and personalized music?
+ How to keep music taste diversity?
+ How to help artists get more payments beyond streaming share?
Solutions
+ Although relatively unknown talented artists are often not exposed in major media, they do occupy live venues around us. Besides great venues select great artists. How might we allow users to discover these artists and their best pieces through live venues.
+ How might we create a social network for users to get recommendations from the people (artists, fans, critics, live venues, music labels, magazines, etc) they trust or appreciate for more fresh and personalized music recommendations.
+ Going to live venues is a trendy way to enjoy music and recently, vinyl is a trending medium. How might we help sell performance tickets and vinyl records.
- KEY FEATURES -
1. Discover music and artists through live venues.
The relatively unknown artists are seldom exposed in major media, but they often occupy local live venues. Venues with good reputations are great resources for recommending artists and their music. Choices from good venues are often solid. Besides locations provide good references.
+ Checking venue popularity visually through different sized location drops.
+ Timeline function for better exploring live venues, performing artists and artists' schedules.
+ Quickly experiencing artists' music when discovering them through live venues.
+ "Buy tickets" function to provide alternative income from streaming share.
Design thinking:
I don’t think getting recommendations from music editors from major media or major music products are good for us. They make us have very similar music taste as their over powerful effect. Getting recommendations from algorithm gives similar negative effect.
How about let users find the guys they like and get recommendations from them. They could be the artists they like, or the fans they feel cool. They will give the users different recommendations but probably very relating to the users’ taste. Maybe some recommendations are different from the users’ tastes, but they may be more willing to try as their commendations are from the people they like.
It’s a bit like Instagram. The best thing of Instagram is people can get the stuff from the people they like, rather than from editors. That’s why I designed the social networking structure to this product. When the people we are following find some music we like, we can also know the music immediately. It's for giving the newest recommendations.
3. User centric experience.
Intuitive way for triggering player screen when holding phones with a single hand. And adjusting time track by rotating the vinyl from anywhere.
The default design is for right handed users. However users can easily switch it to left handed mode in settings. Because the small vinyl is on either side, it lowers the chance of mis-tapping other icons on tab bar when triggering player screen.
My proposal:
For efficiently going back to the main screen, I keep the tabbar structure.
For avoiding mis-tap on the icons on tabbar and keeping interaction intuitive, I designed a small vinyl in either side for left-handed or right-handed users to trigger player screen.
For adjusting time track easily and intuitively, I designed a big vinyl in player screen. Users can rotate that vinyl from anywhere to adjust the time, instead of sliding a small dot.
Check the animation video at HERE.
4. A timer for stopping music.
I heard many users complaining about music continuing to play while they are asleep. If sensor technology is too far into the future, a timer will be a good alternative.
5. Lyrics and song reviews for deeply understanding artists' works.
Sometimes we need more background knowledge to understand artists' music. How about users contributing to that?
6. Browse function for getting trending recommendations.
It's a traditional function for users to get trending music. But it's a faster and easier way to discover new artists and their music.
- ICONOGRAPHY -
- WIREFRAME -
- PROCESS X DOCUMENTATION -
Research
Music from major music media is good. However, I still love to try some niche music as an alternative. I’m a foreigner from Beijing, China. When I came to the US, I only knew some world famous artists through major media. When I try to discover some relatively unknown talented local artists, I always feel exhausted. Normally I search live venues first, such as Webster Hall, Music Hall Of Williamsburg. Because the artists who are able to perform in these venues suppose good. After discovering the artists, I enter their names in Apple Music or Spotify for discovering their music. Normally I can find them and enjoy their music. But when I try to these artists' live performances, I feel exhausted again. I wonder whether I can design a product making this discovery experience easier and more pleasant. That’s my original motivation.
After research for precedents, I found Reverbnation.com has good functions for niche artists. Besides artists’ music, it shows their schedules of performances, photos, artists’ favorite artists, fans. Users can follow each other. It’s a very good precedent. But it is a website. (https://www.reverbnation.com/thaddeusannagreene) I wanna create a mobile based product allowing users' to enjoy their discoveries everywhere.
Other precedents are SoundCloud, Shazam, SoundHound, Rdio, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Musixmatch, MusiPop, Manager, Rhapsody, Billboard, Play Music, Soundtracker, Sing!, Undrtone, Ticketmaser, Stubhub, Eventbrite.
Pain points and chances
+ Apple Music, Spotify and other famous music products are more for famous artists. It's hard for relatively unknown artists or independent artists to expose or promote themselves to the public. But live venues are good places to discover them.
+ Recommendations are often generated by systems or editors based on the user's taste. However, sometimes we need something different from our old tastes.
+ Lack of live show (concert) information, although live shows are the big part of the music industry.
+ Popular music tastes are controlled by major media and major music labels. Major music labels have more money for promoting their artists in major media. But why should we obey their tastes and preferences?
+ Lack of a seamless way to check popular live venues, the performers and their music. Most music products for live music are designed for selling tickets, instead of exploring artists and their music. Foursquare, Yelp can provide where good venues are, but not for discovering artists and their music.
+ Browsing other cool independent individuals' and groups' musical tastes will be a better alternative for discovering new music.
+ Less famous artists need connections with fans more as they expose less in major media. They even need more ways for getting incomes.
+ The music occupying major music products and media are not local. However, there are a lot of local niche artists performing in live venues around us everyday.
Why map based interface for discovering artists and music?
+ Great venues select great artists. So finding great venues is the first step for discovering great artists and music. Time is less important than locations in this scenario.
+ How to quickly experience artists' music when discovering them in good live venues?
+ I also tried calendar based interface for showing most popular live venues or most popular artists performing in live venues. It's great to check who are most famous/popular. But it’s killing the opportunities for discovering not yet famous/popular artists.
+ Calendar based interface can show most popular live venues or most popular performing artists. But it’s killing the opportunities for discovering relatively unknown artists. However, locations provide some good references. When considering relatively niche music, there are always some places popping up in our minds such as Gulou in Beijing, East Village, Williamsburg, or Bushwick in New York. Considering these variables together, I figured out a map based proposal. Users can explore which venues are popular. They can also explore the areas they are interested in, even if fewer people have been to the venues in that area.
Final proposal,
How to show location and time better in performance schedule?
+ Reverbnation.com has a similar function. https://www.reverbnation.com/thaddeusannagreene. But when scrolling down for checking more shows, the map disappears as screen limitation.
+ Both time and locations are important for making decisions for shows. But how to show them in the same screen on a phone? And is location more important in this scenario? If I wanna make sure artists' fame and popularities, the places they performing are good references.
+ When I check an artist's schedule, I also wanna know who performing with him/her, as I think they may be also worth digging.
+ Considering design integrity.
Final proposal,
How did I design personal page?
+ If I put Releases, Digs, Playlists, Vinyl, Moments in the same screen, browsing them will be exhausted. That's why I separate them in different pages. Vinyl is for showing off the records users have bought proudly. I wanna encourage users to buy records. That's extra payment artists can get beyond streaming share.
+ On Spotify, artists can share the music they wanna recommend. But it costs more. It will be more convenient if artists just dig the music they like and others can see them directly.
+ If we find good resources for recommendations, how can we discover more and stay tune with them?
+ When we find someone we trust or appreciate, we wanna know more than the songs and playlists they dug. We want to know the albums, videos, artists and live venues as well.
My proposal,
Why improving the interactions for triggering player screen and adjusting time track?
On Apple Music, users may mis-tap the icons on the tab bar when triggering player screen. The player bar is good for Spotify as it doesn't have a tab bar. So I designed a small vinyl on either side of the screen for triggering player screen. As a result, I can keep the tab bar and lower the chance of mis-tapping. (I have to keep tab bar, because users can double tap the icons to return to main screens.)
In my product, there are a lot of “open new screens”. I need an interaction for quickly coming back to the main screen. So when tapping the icons on tab bar twice, users can go back to the main page. It’s a similar challenge with Instagram’s. For avoiding mis-tapping, I begin to think: do we need a bar for triggering player screen? Is the music info. on that bar necessary? What are we trying to do when we open music app? Yes, it’s for finding some music and playing them. So we probably know what it playing. If we are curious about what we listening, a full screen check is more helpful as we can know more than songs’ names and artists. We wanna know their lyrics, meanings, reviews, stories, even processes for creating them as well. So I need to design a very intuitive interaction for quickly triggering the player screen, if I get rid of that player bar. Besides, when we immerse ourselves in music, our phone screens are often locked. As we wanna know the songs' names, we can check them on the lock screen.
Apple Music and Spotify have a similar design in adjusting time tracks. It's ok to use. But what could a more intuitive and easier interaction be? How about tap and scroll anywhere to adjust time track? So my proposal is rotating the vinyl from anywhere to adjust time.
Final proposal,
How to provide more knowledge for songs?
Spotify's Behind The Lyrics. The content plays automatically and it's too hard to go back.
My proposal is providing lyrics for every song and allowing users to add reviews to that songs. Users can rate for reviews. The top rated reviews will appear in the top area.
Documentation for sketches.
Cover artist, Sammy Brue.