The Guide to more Interactive Listening
Reinventing Spotify - Building Friendships Through Music
How do we make Spotify more social?
TIMELINE
15 weeks
ROLE
Product Designer
OVERVIEW
In this case study, I explore how Spotify users actually discover and share music, revealing that people more often find new songs through friends and external platforms like YouTube rather than through Spotify’s built-in recommendations. Through user interviews and analysis, I identified key behavioral patterns and design opportunities that point to a need for more meaningful social and discovery experiences within the app itself. These insights inform proposed solutions aimed at making music discovery more social, intuitive, and connected to real user behavior.
INTRO
Why do a casestudy on Spotify?
Spotify is home to roughly 40 million different songs, boasting a wide variety of music ranging from pop, kpop, rap, to even heavy metal. While Spotify has many different features that differentiate it from other music platforms, it feels like something is missing from the app.
I admit, Spotify makes a good effort keeping the users invested and relaxed. But, something about scrolling through hit-or-miss playlists seems so time-consuming and annoying. I am in no way criticizing the way Spotify curates music to me, however, sometimes the algorithm can be so off.
Building off of that, I want to see this was a shared feeling among listeners through this case study.
Understanding the User
A Disconnect Between Spotify’s Discovery Tools and User Behavior
In my pursuit to find the common issues Spotify users have, I interviewed three different Spotify users: a new user, a relatively frequent user, and a long-time user. I found that they each followed a similar routine, where they would directly going to the library tab and listening to their own playlist. My case study focuses more on the discovery/social aspect of Spotify. Users tended to find music externally rather than through the app platform. While, less frequently, some users did use the recommended playlist to find music. Below I listed the patterns user had when it came to music discovery.
1.
Listening to music through other forms of social media
“I find most of music from Youtube”
The majority of my results shown that users would find music from other apps like Youtube or TikTok rather than within the Spotify app. I went further into this and asked why? Users complained that Spotify’s recommended playlist were bad or weren’t useful. They said that there were too many songs to know if they would like them and that when listening, more than most times, it wouldn’t be a song they liked.
2.
Listening to music from friends
“Most of the music I find are from friends or the radio”
Many of the interviewees also said that they found music through friends. This is a common pattern where users would send songs to their friends and would themselves find music through the same process. Interestingly, one of my users suggested that they found the sharing process tedious and annoying to do. This sparked some ideas to simplify the sharing process Spotify currently has.
3.
Listening through the recommended playlist
“I didn’t really know about it until recently[recommended playlist] becuase it doesn’t really seem likes it’s really clear where it is”
“I don't really listen to the Spotify recommended playlist, they don’t have any songs I like”
This form of discovery was less used but was still an option for one of the users. They said that they recently discovered the recommended playlist, but thought it wasn’t clear before then. However, after while, they sometimes enjoy using the recommended playlist Spotify has. In contrast, my other users said that they dislike using the recommended playlist since they don’t like the songs in the playlist.
Core findings
Users Discover Music Through People, Not Playlists
Looking at the frequency of the different responses I got from my audience, it was obvious that users weren't utilizing the Spotify recommended playlist but rather going off and finding their own music. Additionally users were more likely to find music through Youtbe or friends. They described Spotify as more a holder for their music rather than a means to discover music.
trends & insights
Listening Habits → Design Direction
Defining the problem
As a bored college student always commuting from class to class, I want personalized and fun music that can make my walk to class more enjoyable, but I can’t do that well because…
Playlists are numerous and hard to navigate
I find it difficult and tedious to share music with my friends
What’s Next?!
Brainstorming Solutions
After a hundred post notes, my friends and I narrowed down our ideas to three solutions.
Final solution
Private Messaging and stories
I chose the first feature as my final solution. I thought that creating a private messaging system on Spotify has been long called for. Private messaging would make it easier for users to share and listen to music as a collective. As people usually find music through other people, this would make it easier to discover music since everything is on shared medium. I think this feature would also increase the screen time on users since now users can enjoy music with their friends directly on the app.
sketching
low fidelity
This was the original sketch of the feature. Users would enter the app through a mail icon at the top right corner. Here they would be transported to the inbox page where they can see all their recent messages. Another idea I had to go along with this feature was the ability to see your friends who are also active on Spotify. This would also be placed on the home screen, similar to Instagram. Lastly, I also thought the idea of having the stories/friend-activity be clickable entryways to your friends profile. Here, it would show the current song they are listening to and what their favorite artist are for the week.
Feature Requirements
Icon to the inbox
Ability to send music through messages and throughout the app
An inbox to store your latest messages
Content Requirements
A react button on music or messages
Your inbox should show the last song you listened to
Icon of the song you send
Building the Feature
constant iterations
Exploring different entry points
How will users access the inbox?
I struggled with the placement of the icon. I thought that having the entryway be at the bottom would differ from Spotify’s current design too much. But, on the other hand, putting the entry way on the homepage at the top right would be too limiting and confusing for the users. I decided that having the icon at the bottom would make it easier and quicker to access.
Making the inbox page more interactive
In this picture, I wanted the users to have a way to see which of their friends were also listening to music. I think that the thought that your friends are also listening to music at the same time creates some sense of collectiveness and unity. While I initially liked the second idea to have a small text displaying who is listening to music, I found this idea too distracting and out of place.
Sending music over messages
I needed a way for the users to send music over text. To accomplish this I wanted to either have a plus icon on the message button or have a floating button above the message. I thought that the first idea was better as this is similar to how other apps situate where to put their images. At the same time, I thought that having a floating button took up too much space
Reacting to music over messages
For my feature I wanted to have a react button where users could either swipe on a message/song or react with emojis. I decided to go with the emojis options since it would be hard to organize the slider after it has been used. With an emoji it can be placed at the top right of the message, similar to iPhone messages.
How will users send music through the app?
Other than the features needed to create messages in the inbox, there needs to be a method for users to easy send music they are listening to. There are two ways a user can spot a song, they can either be currently listening to a song or looking through an playlist. On the songs tab they could simply click a button which will lead to a share screen. Here they can choose what friends they want to send their song to. For songs via playlist, it get a little more complex. I wanted the user to have the ability to choose several songs to send their friends. I though the idea of having users holding down songs and clicking several songs would make the easiest and most intuitive method to send music.
Perfecting the Medium Fidelity
UI Kit
Final product
Mobile Design
Spotify will always be my go to app whenever I need music on my walks or when I am studying. As much as I love Spotify, there are always ways to improve and develop. I hope that one day Spotify will develop an idea similar to private messaging! All in all, I have learned so much from creating, writing, and designing this feature. In the future, I hope I can take what I learned from this to other fields and ideas.
looking forward
If I had had more time I would have also created a way for users to interact with their friend's profiles. I think that messaging/inbox is associated with the idea of friends and profiles. The current Spotify design doesn’t maximize the social aspect. Spotify currently keeps track of how what songs or genres you listen to. Why not put that information in the public, right on your profile?
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