Spotify Listening Parties

A conceptual project designed by Mike Hackett.

December 2022 — January 2023, Remote

Adapting the album release event for the age of streaming services.

My Roles

UX Researcher

UX + UI Designer

Product Tester

Timeline

Research — 2 weeks

Design — 2 weeks

Testing — 1 week

Tools

Figma

FaceTime

Maze

THE PROBLEM

Spotify does not provide a space for fans to interact with one another and share their thoughts.

Growing up in the age of social media, I’ve seen first-hand the ways in which fans interact with one another on a variety of platforms. Whether it be through making a TikTok to their favorite song or tweeting their thoughts about their favorite artist’s latest album, fans have found ways to establish community with like-minded individuals. While it’s great that social media platforms have created these spaces for fans to connect, I began to wonder why streaming services like Spotify haven’t incorporated features that allowed users to partake in these types of interactions that help to build that same sense of community.

THE SOLUTION

A live-stream album release event that allows fans to communicate in real time with one another.

Easily discoverable.

A dynamic carousel on the Spotify homepage that will promote upcoming listening parties based on the music you stream.

Searchable and filterable.

Conduct a quick search to see if your favorite artist is hosting a listening party or filter between ongoing an upcoming events.

Real-time chatting.

Chat with other Spotify users from around the world in real time during exclusive album release events from your favorite artists.

BACKGROUND RESEARCH

Streaming has revolutionized the music industry and has begun to integrate with social media platforms.

When was the last time you had to wait so you could go to the store to pick up a copy of your favorite artist’s latest album?

How about the last time you purchased an album on iTunes just so you could listen to it?

For many, it’s likely been a while. Streaming services have only continued to grow in popularity over the years and have basically led to the technological extinction of the CD and other physical forms of music. According to the RIAA, physical music like CDs and vinyls accounted for only 11% of all U.S. recorded music revenue in 2021 while streaming on the other hand accounted for 83%.

As these streaming platforms have become more and more utilized, they have also been integrating more with various social media platforms. In 2018, Spotify announced an integration with Instagram and Facebook that allows users to share what they’re listening to directly to their stories. This helps users connect with like-minded individuals who share similar interests. In a study conducted by MusicWatch, 90% of frequent social media users take part in some form of music-related activity on a variety of platforms. They also found that approximately 60% of social media users will head directly to streaming services upon seeing any release information on any of the major platforms.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

Other products in this space are placing more of a focus on either the ability to stream music OR allowing users to build community.

In order to gain more insight into the world of music streaming services, I researched a few of Spotify’s key competitors as well as one indirect competitor:

Apple Music

When beginning my competitive analysis, I identified Apple Music as Spotify’s biggest competition. It is one of the biggest streaming platforms ranking second to Spotify in terms of users in 2021. While they are similar products at their core, Apple Music doesn’t offer nearly as many social or interactive features that are available on Spotify or other products.

YouTube Music

Another competitor I’ve identified is YouTube Music. While YouTube itself is known to be very community-oriented and interactive, YouTube Music doesn’t offer any of that. This may be due to the fact that YouTube is free so it was not deemed necessary to include in it’s counterpart. This product seems more focused on streaming rather than building community.

SoundCloud

SoundCloud is the final direct competitor I looked at in my research. Unlike the other competitors, this product seemed to be more focused on community rather than streaming. It offers tons of social features like leaving comments at certain timestamps, discovering independent artists, and a social feed to see the latest updates from the users and artists you follow.

TikTok

I also looked at TikTok as an indirect competitor during my research. With it being such a social and interactive platform, it is home to many conversations surrounding many different topics. This provided a lot of insight into how online communities, more specifically music fandoms, form and engage with one another whether it be in the comment section or another method.

The first thing I noticed about each of these products is that they all seem to specialize in one specific feature. Apple Music places a strong emphasis on their streaming feature whereas SoundCloud focuses more on the social aspect of their product. Similarly, YouTube Music focuses solely on streaming music and videos, but doesn’t allow for any type of social interaction that YouTube is known for. To round out my research, I also looked into TikTok as an indirect competitor as it is known for playing a huge role in the music industry. While it is not a music streaming platform, it was apparent that several users utilize TikTok as a platform to share thoughts on music and music-related topics.

THE BIG QUESTION

Before enacting my research plan, I needed to hone in on a specific research question that would inevitably guide my design decisions.

Having found that most music streaming platforms don’t offer ways for users to truly interact with one another, I wanted to figure out a way to help Spotify become more interactive so I created a few POV statements:

  1. I’d like to explore ways to help avid music listeners to connect with fans from around the world because it can help build a community of like-minded individuals.

  2. I’d like to explore ways to help artists’ fans to celebrate an album release event because it is often something they are highly anticipating.

  3. I’d like to explore ways to help artists to create a more personal album release event because it will help them to connect with the people who support them.

From these POV statements, I developed some HMW questions to help guide me in forming my research question:

  1. How might we connect Spotify users from around the world?

  2. How might we make album releases more interactive?

  3. How might we create online communities of like-minded individuals?

  4. How might we help Spotify users interact with each other?

  5. How might we help individuals connect with other fans of the same artist?

With my POV statements and HMW questions formed, I finally decided to focus my project on helping connect Spotify users connect with one another and to help foster the broader music community. I also decided on a more concrete research question that will be used to guide my design decisions throughout this project:

How might we create a way for Spotify to encourage conversation among users within its product?

USER INTERVIEWS

With my research question decided, I conducted 5 user interviews with current Spotify users. In these interviews I asked each participant questions regarding their experience with Spotify, their listening habits, and their experience with music fandoms.

From this research, I found that each participant actually makes use of all the social and interactive features that Spotify currently offers. This led me to believe that they would be open and willing to try out any new features that the company rolls out.

Spotify users frequently make use of the current social features that Spotify offers.

Those who participate in fandom culture are likely to partake in different types of events their favorite artists hold like album releases.

I also found that 4 out of 5 participants have both participated in a midnight album release event and have been involved in fandom culture. Based off of these findings, it makes me believe that users who have participated in fandom culture are likely to support their favorite artists by listening to albums as soon as they are released as well as be open to discussing their opinions on the music with other fans.

USER PERSONAS

After completing my user interviews, I began to visualize who exactly I am designing this feature for.

From the insights I gathered through my research and user interviews, I created two user personas to help me better understand Spotify’s target users. The two personas I created were the avid music listener and the casual listener.

BRAINSTORMING

Based off of my findings, what are some potential solutions that will help to address my research question?

Social Feed

One of my first ideas was to incorporate a social feed within Spotify. My vision was to create a place where users would be able to share songs or albums that they are listening to.

Customizable Profiles

My next idea was to allow more customization on the user profile. Some features I was thinking of including were a status message and/or a current fave song that is pinned to your profile. This would help create a more personalized experience for the user.

Listening Parties

The last idea I came up with was a live album release event feature titled Listening Parties. With this feature, users will be able to join an exclusive album release event where they can chat in real-time with other Spotify users from around the world and discuss their thoughts.

Following my brainstorming session, I ultimately decided to move forward with the live album release event feature. This feature felt the most different when compared to what other products are currently doing and would also help Spotify to keep users streaming music while simultaneously interacting with other users.

THE PRODUCT’S FLOW

When brainstorming different flows to design for, I tried to think about which flows in particular would be the most relevant to the solution I was designing. Ultimately, I decided on designing flows for the process of RSVPing to a listening party, joining a listening party via an artist’s profile and sending a chat in a listening party.

What steps will a user take to successfully use the listening party feature?

Task Flow #1 — RSVP for a listening party

Task Flow #2 — Join a listening party via the artist’s profile

Task Flow #3 — Send a chat in the listening party

LO-FI WIREFRAMES

With the key task flows identified, it was time to begin visualizing what the user’s journey will look like.

Home

Search

Listening Party Tab

Artist Page

Listening Party Event

INITIAL FEEDBACK

After designing my low-fidelity screens, I reached out to my mentor and other designers for any feedback that I can use to improve my high-fidelity screens.

Through a call with my mentor, I received feedback that I should find a more visual way to promote this new feature within the Spotify platform to help bring more attention to it. In order to achieve this, I updated the Spotify homepage (since this is a page that the product opens up to for users) to showcase a dynamic banner promoting relevant listening parties in addition to it’s pre-existing sections.

Version 1

Version 2

HI-FI WIREFRAMES

With key task flows identified, it was time to design some higher fidelity screens that would be used in my usability testing sessions.

Home

Search

Listening Party Tab

Artist Page

Listening Party Event

USER TESTING

The tested flows were lengthy and complicated and users felt as if they could be a bit more streamlined.

For testing, I conducted 15 unmoderated usability tests through Maze. Through these tests, I uncovered that most participants felt as if the flow to RSVP to a listening party event was unnecessarily long. They expressed frustrations that they needed to tap through multiple confirmation screens to accomplish a single task. In order to resolve this issue, I designed a new screen that could be used as a landing page of sorts for listening parties.

Inspiration

In order to remain consistent with Spotify’s design system, I referenced a screen they used in order to promote Taylor Swift’s latest album release. The reason I chose to reference this screen is because of the elements that it included such as the live countdown, the album details, as well as the CTA to pre-save the album. I felt as if they were all relevant and could be altered to fit the goal of the listening party.

With my reference design solution chose, I began creating my own screen for users to use when they want to RSVP to a listening party or check on the listening party’s details. By creating this new screen, I also removed all of the pre-existing confirmation screens I designed as users will be able to either check or un-check the RSVP box on this landing page.

Version 1

Version 2

FINAL PROTOTYPE

With the insights I gathered through my mentor sessions, group critiques, and usability tests, I was able to create my final prototype.

Throughout the design process, I was able to gather tons of invaluable insights that helped guide my design decisions and help me create a final prototype that better served the target user.

REFLECTION

Working with existing design systems is an exciting challenge.

For this project, one of my main constraints was that I needed to design my solution within the confines of Spotify’s existing design system. While this might sound like it made the project a whole lot easier due to one less step being taken out, it presented a whole new list of struggles. I needed to create a feature that felt native to the current version of Spotify’s product and a flow that seamlessly integrated into how a Spotify user currently uses the product. However, through completing this project, I feel more ready than ever to join a product design team and help them better improve their own products by using their existing design systems.

User insights make for a better project.

For this project, I tested my prototype with 15 individuals and was left with tons of great feedback. By reading the participants’ feedback, I noticed several flaws in my design that I wouldn’t have caught otherwise. I feel as if working on a project alone (for the most part) you tend to feel siloed in your decision making processes. However, by taking user feedback and continuously iterating on my design, I was able to create a design solution better suited for the target users.

NEXT STEPS

Explore other ways to help users interact with one another on Spotify.

If I were to continue working on this project, I would like to revisit some of the other design solutions that I brainstormed but didn’t explore further. For example, I would like to create a way for users to customize their profile pages so that if someone were to visit your page via a comment you left in a listening party, they would be able to get a better sense of who you are and interact with you individually.

With that being said, I would also like to explore some ways that users can interact with each other whether it be a social feed within Spotify or a direct messaging feature that would allow users to chat with one another or have an easier way to share songs they think others may like.