Gamifying the User Experience for a Music Marketplace
Defining the brand identity, interaction design and purpose through a comprehensive UX approach
QUICK SUMMARY
Yeah, we know how convenient music streaming services are.
But, what if there is an alternative to that?
One that closes the gap between artists and fans, where artists are compensated properly and they can create all sort of perks for those that own their music?
Where music fans are rewarded for being active music fans, where they can collect, trade and enjoy all sort of exclusivities and limited editions?
CHALLENGE:
- The current state of the music industry reveals that streaming services are not thought for the music artists, where only the top 1% are getting considerable revenue.
- Music is largely seen as a commodity now, as music fans don’t own music, they simply rent it, so the connection between music artists and loyal fans is decreasing rapidly.
- The Music Industry is always changing and many artists are not well versed in the Business Side of music. For multiple reasons they resist on developing this area of their careers.
OBJECTIVES:
- Present an innovative way that provides meaning and excitement towards owning music, where there are multiple incentives to reward music fans and challenge them.
- Empower the music artists in ways for them to fully develop as music creators, where they can close the gap between them and their fans while learning different tools, strategies and mindsets to conquer the music industry.
ROLE
• For the Two Sided Music Marketplace:
I worked as a Gamification Designer, where I conducted UX Research, Business Strategy and assisted defining the brand identity and purpose.
• For the Music Business Learning Platform:
I led the Product Design from the very beginning, which included website design, prototyping, user testing and copywriting.
METHODS
This was a group project and I worked with an UI Designer and a Team of Developers.
My Design process consisted of the following methods:
- The Octalysis Framework
- The Hooked Model
- The Self-Determination Theory
- The Heros Journey
- The Player Types Framework
- Design Thinking
APPROACH
As a Blues musician myself, independent music manager and a die hard music industry self-taught.
I had conducted:
- Analysis of the Current State of the Music Industry.
- Research of the History of the Music Industry and its Evolution.
- Competitor Analysis.
- Interviewed 15 musicians of different levels, backgrounds and styles.
- Interviewed 10 different music fans that were also collectors (Of different things)
Exploring Solutions to the Music Industry...
The Recordifly platform is an immersive music Marketplace, based on blockchain technology that proves the ownership of the music.
Music fans can earn by collecting, trading and discovering new music and have a direct connection with their favorite artists, granting access to exclusive content and opportunities only available for superfans.
Presenting the Metavinyl; a new format of listening and owning music that allows creators to shape entire new experiences to their audiences and closest supporters.
For music artist it will provide all the ways needed to present music to their fans in a brand new format while owning the totality of royalties and masters.
While navigating several features that will help them advance further in the music industry, set goals and turn a music career into a exciting game that will reward as they track and progress on every goal and dream.
Music artists will be able to create exclusive opportunities for their audience and unlock the secrets of navigating the music industry in the Recordifly Academy, where artists can equip with all the tools and knowledge to define and reach their own meaning of success in the music business…
Competitor Analysis
INSIGHTS FROM RESEARCH
Those three business models were selected to perform the main competitor analysis.
Spotify is the leading platform in the Streaming model, where the majority of music fans hangout, but it is also the one that pays the less per stream ($0.003 – $0.005 in average)
Bandcamp allows music fans to directly support their favorite artists by purchasing and downloading albums, but they run on an outdated model which the majority of music consumers don’t follow anymore as streaming allows access to almost an infinite supply of music for a small monthly subscription.
Audius is an emerging brand in the Blockchain scene, however they are still under the umbrella of streaming and fail to properly address the issues of traditional streaming services.
PLAYER TYPES
ARTISTS
INSIGHTS FROM RESEARCH
As a musician myself with over 10 years in the Music Industry I have access to musicians from all scenes and backgrounds, which I interviewed 15 of them for this project.
The music industry is very divided as some of them want to delegate everything to record labels and managers, others want to manage their careers independently and others are driven mostly about activism through their music and are against consumerism and don’t pay much attention to the business side of things due to their values and ideals.
The needs, motivations and struggles are very different so I ended up grouping them in four player types: The Signed Artists, The Indie Musician, The Activist and The Detractor.
AUDIENCE
INSIGHTS FROM RESEARCH
There are multiple ways in which music fans interact with their music and since the streaming era the music has faded to become a commodity I also decided to check what motivations do they have when it comes to collecting other things such as comics, stamps, coins or minifigures.
I interviewed 10 different music fans to see what needs do they would like addressed in a platform that is about collecting music, and there are very different desires and levels of interest.
Which led to the creation of Four Player Types: The Casual Collector, The Tech Investor, The Treasure Hunter and The Raving Fan.
STARTING THE DESIGN
IDEATION
INSIGHTS FROM THE IDEATION STAGE:
We started to do different brainstorming sessions (Individual and Team based) in order to map out the 8 core drives of motivation and behavior as proposed by the Octalysis Framework, the goal was to produce as many ideas for features that could be used for the UX, the Interaction Design, Game-like mechanics. the Marketing Messaging and the Brand Identity as a whole.
We mapped out different ideation stages for each of the Four Phases of the Experience:
– Discovery
– Onboarding
– Scaffolding
– Endgame
INSIGHTS FROM IMPLEMENTATION:
Organized a Spreadsheet to accomodate all features for evaluation and grading, where the ranking systems, point hierarchys, reward programs (Points, Badges and Leagues) were graded in terms of Difficulty to produce, value to the users and value to the company.
This approach allowed us to dive deeper into the neccesities of the users and feedback from the different interviews done in order to align with the business metrics.
WIREFRAMES I
When we were defining the brand strategy of the music marketplace, seeing the values and decisions to empower the music artists, I proposed the idea of a Music Industry Business Hub to be a branch of the project to provide further value to users (how to thrive on the platform and the music industry as a whole)
The team approved and made me lead the whole efforts, I originally entered as a Gamification Systems Designer, I started to move towards the overall UX strategy and Product Design.
I started on paper to have a clear website structure (I didn’t knew about Wireframing tools at the moment)
WIREFRAMES II
I quickly started to look for ways to move the paper wireframes to digital and started to learn Balsamiq which once the structures of the website were approved, I moved the designs and implemented them on WordPress.
FINAL RESULTS
THE MUSIC BUSINESS ACADEMY
(Delivered Working Prototype Developed on WordPress)
THE MUSIC MARKETPLACE
This is the main Music Marketplace platform, the High Fidelity Wireframes were done on Figma by an Inhouse UI Designer and then presented to the team of developers that mounted the designs.
My role in this part was setting up the Gamification Design and User Journeys, setting up the rules and goals of the Points and Ranking Systems as well as defining the Awards/Challenges presented to both music artists and fans.
USABILITY TESTING
INSIGHTS FROM USER TESTINGS:
From the 10 interviewed musicians I followed up with 4 of them (One musician from each of the Four Player Types)
Presented them the Main Music Marketplace and Music Business Learning Platforms as two sides of the same coin.
The music artists quickly understood the value proposition intended by Recordifly and found it as a way to gamify their music careers, where one side of the coin is where your music is stored, distributed and the music artists grow as they further gather new listeners (holders) and progress in the ranking system as if it was World of Warcraft…
While the other component (The Academy) was there to teach them how to further use the platform and how to better navigate the Music Industry.
The Music Scene is a complex space, where there are no clear rules, no real indicators or feedback about performance, and the musicians that tried out the different components found it as a way to minimize friction of the business side of things and a way to add excitement to the growth of their careers.
What the client said about my work...
The Project was then handed over to the Developers to continue the creation of the platform, as it also involves gathering music licenses, alliances with music distributors and creation of the curriculum of the Academy.
The project is now being developed and continuing VC investing rounds.
My participation in the project was in total of 7 months.
