Spotify Social Albums
Increasing the social function of the app through new album releases.
Timeline: 1 Week
Roles: Product Designer, UX Researcher
1.0: Music: A Shared Experience
Spotify is a Swedish audio streaming and media services provider – one of the largest music streaming services in the market. With over 456 million monthly active users, including 195 million paying subscribers, Spotify offers very limited opportunities for connection between users. Aside from listening activity on desktop, Spotify users are largely unable to interact with friends.
How can Spotify increase the social function of the app through new album releases while maintaining its simplicity?
2.0: "What's New," Hidden from Sight
I noted down my initial impressions of the home screen, desktop friends activity, and the “What’s New” page. The homepage on mobile takes you straight to dozens of automatically generated recommendations for existing playlists, songs, and albums.
I found that the "What's New" page has particularly poor discoverability, and is is only updated with new music from the artist the user actively follows. Spotify users often do not bother to follow their favorite artists; thus missing out on hundreds of new releases. Moreover, it had an inconsistent interface from the home page’s “New Release” in its layout of the albums and accompanying text, and overall disconnect from the home page and its new music recommendations.
3.0: Listeners Utilize "New Releases"
To further understand how an average Spotify mobile user utilized its social functions and new release suggestions, I interviewed 5 college students who were avid Spotify listeners.
100% of them regularly click on the “New Release'' suggestions when they appear on their homepage, stating that Spotify was often accurate as to their artist interests, and the home page was an accessible place to check out new music suggestions.
60% of users heard of new releases through external social media apps or word of mouth, then proceeded to search and play them on Spotify.
80% of students surveyed had never used nor clicked the “What’s New” page, stating they had never even known about the function and it was easily ignored on the home page.
100% of students surveyed stated that they enjoy the current social aspect of Spotify: its desktop Friend Activity. Many highlighted its minimalism and simple user interface/experience, but would enjoy additional social functions in order to further connect with friends.
4.0: Designing Home Page and Album Comments
As the home page “New Release” tabs seemed to be by far the most successful way to push new releases to users, I decided to add a simple comment option inside the existing tab. By placing a small comment bar in the middle of the like and play buttons, the “New Release” is limited to three essential functions users can interact with when curious about an artist’s new release. Users are only allowed to comment on newly released albums that show up on their homepage, making the action time sensitive and providing a sense of real-time interaction.
lso included in the home page are horizontally scrolling tabs displaying the user’s friends’ comments on recently released albums. Using the same UI as the “New Release” tab, users can see short comments from their added friends, thus staying consistent with the minimalism of the existing Friend Activity. Users can see friends’ comments on their albums for a month, building upon the real-time function of the commenting, and also exposing the user to more new music through their Spotify friends.
Lastly, clicking on the comments brings you to the existing album view page, but now includes a view of the user or the user’s friends’ comment. With a simple profile picture and username for identification, the user can view the comment right below the album cover and name, as well as edit their comment.
