Practices of Design Innovation

Music industry.

General.

Over centuries, the value of music is always related to both economic and cultural aspects. However, with the recent research, it is found that the cultural value showed a shrinkage, specifically in the value of socialisation, under the significant growth in musical commercialisation. The musical commercialisation enables people privatised music through selling music as products or service (music streaming), and the trend of music privatisation reaches its peak with the global pandemic outbreak (as shown in the diagram). At this special moment, it is a challenge with greater potential opportunities for Spotify, as the largest global music streaming service, to make innovative revolution protecting the loss of value in the industry.

Market & competitors.

Before digging further into the design, our design team would like to indicate how the decisions were made considering Spotify’s position in the market.

According to the previous research, it was found that the music industry is highly driven by the technology revolution. While Spotify’s ultimate competitors, like Apple Music (Second largest in the market), Amazon Music (third largest), and Tencent Music (fourth largest), are all having technical backgrounds, Spotify is placed in a passive position facing the fast-paced changes in technology. Consequently, beside staying connected with the technical revolution, it is also beneficial for Spotify to avoid disadvantaged competition and keep innovating from their own. Therefore, the design strategy was built up based on two cores, 1. Constructing stronger connection from technological fields 2. Further developing on Spotify’s values (Both cultural and economic).

As the initial goal and attraction of Spotify, providing 100% freemium music had achieved a great success which is arguably the main reason leading Spotify the top in the music streaming industry without a technological background. Furthermore, it cannot be denied that Spotify’s early goal was largely corresponded to the original value of music by enabling a more accessible method to both listeners and creators. With that, our design team framed the design intent in a more tangible way.

Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity – by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it.”

Design Intent.

For the design intent, its focus went back on the value of music itself. When the competition of economic value tending to be destructive, it is believed that there is a larger potential exploring and extending the cultural value of music. Posed to the current global pandemic, an increasingly demand of connecting socialization with music was shown from the previous research. Therefore, the design intent aims to strengthening and developing based on Spotify’s current assets to create more value and maintain its industry leading position.

In detail, development will be built on valuable circulation between ‘Listeners and listeners’, ‘Creatoros and listeners’ and ‘Spotify and Users including creators and listeners’. (Shown in the diagram)

*Diagrams are generated from the data in additional research (Appendix).

Creators Listeners

Three initial concepts (in the case of a long-term development) are come up to address the design potentials. These three concepts are designed corresponding to each other based on Spotify’s current assets (expansion of possible value).

Concept 01, targeting the efficiency of socialising network among ‘Spotify’, ‘Creators’, and ‘Listeners’. Aiming to improve business and to increase engagement, this concept attempt to value more generated information from daily uses in different perspectives. (For example, feedbacks, demands, concerns…)

Concept 02, primarily concentrating on the potential of socialising interaction between ‘Creators’ and ‘Listeners’. Attempting to create a value circulation bridging ‘Creators’ and ‘Listeners’, the second concept is designed to enable more creativity through unique entertainment and engagement.

Concept 03, specifically focusing on the socialisation within the ‘Listeners’ groups. Aiming to build up a more collaborative environment for the major user group (Listeners), this concept is intended to be exploring and developing the cultural value of music and aligning this value with Spotify’s business.

Concepts introduction. Success Metric.

All the mentioned three concepts are designed to explore and create potential values within the existing music industry and aligning them with Spotify’s strategy. Different from business profits, it becomes abstract to evaluate potential values, however, it is believed that the innovation into potential values has an exponential growth relation with the business profits as focusing on the introduction part of the product life cycle (as shown in the right). Corroboratively, the three purposed concepts aim to provide Spotify as an entry part of further development.

f(x) = a(1 + r)^x

There are two major variations in the measurement of success, which are ‘r’ as the growth rate directed by the quality (value) of concepts, and ‘x’ as the duration of time intervals. And the gain of potential value ‘f(x)’ can be related to the original business profits ‘a’. Within a preset experimenting time ‘x’ , it can be defined as a success when the outcome value ‘f(x)’ is higher than the prediction (Set up by the excecutive team). And if the outcome value ‘f(x)’ is approaching to prediction in the preset time ‘x’, further adjustment is required to improve the concepts. Otherwise, if the outcome value ‘f(x)’ is lower than the prediction or the growth rate ‘r’ is in a deceasing trend, the concept is defined as a failure.

Concept explaination.

The first concept is to add a ‘Community’ function into the home page of phone application. The ‘Community’ button will be placed with ‘Recent play’ button and setting button in the most obvious position. By clicking the ‘Community’ button, it will lead users into a Spotify community page, where users can find existing solutions to certain issues from the ‘Help’ button, chat with the customer service from the ‘Chat’ button, and send their opinions, feedbacks and concerns from ‘Ideas’ button.

With the gathered data (usage of the above functions) being analysed and categorised by the internal department of Spotify, different topics will be generated based on the defined categories as indications and tips for both listeners and creators.

Project requirement.

Data

Graphic Designers Database* Data Management*

- Designing the content

- Updating the information

- React to the feedback

Concept 01. Business Case.

- Collecting data

- Transporting data to management team.

Order of reaction

- Analysing data

- Designing reaction to feedbacks

- Giving orders to excecutive team.

* May require extra financial support

STEP 1

STEP 2

Key stakeholders

#Listeners #Creator #Spotify

Considering ‘improve business’ and ‘increase engagement’ as the design cores, this concept aims to achieve the cores through a build-in digital community in the phone application. According to the previous research, it was found that the majority of socialisation in relevant to Spotify is occurred outside of the Spotify platform, like Facebook, Instagram. Even though, this phenomenon did not have a negative impact on the business profits, it is arguable that there is a significant loss of the informative data and the efficiency of data transformation. For instance, when one experienced user posts a constructive opinion about Spotify on Facebook, it will a lot longer to get back to Spotify itself, where it can cause to a noticeable loss of nimbleness to the future opportunities for Spotify. Furthermore, the concept of community is not only beneficial to Spotify, but also to Spotify’s user groups, including creators and listeners. Apparently, as a service provider, it is essential for Spotify to have an effective communication channel to all kinds of users and make response to the feedback in time. However, this functionality is not seen from Spotify’s mobile platform where most users are located at. Therefore, by building up the ‘Community’ in mobile platform, Spotify is enabled to have a closer access to its user groups and react to issues and changes in an initiative position. Risks, the input data (the usage of community function) is considered as the major risk for this concept largely due to its uncontrollability. Despite placing in the most noticeable position (home page), if users cannot recognises this function, there will be a shortage of valuable data to make further development.

Indicates finger gesture.

Clicking the community button on home page.

Browsing the community.

Concept 02.

Concept explaination.

The second concept adds an objective ‘rating system’ over the original creative function of ‘collaborative playlist’. To avoid negative impacts to the general users, the ‘rating system’ will be appeared in the form of ‘likes’ or ‘subscriptions. Through applying the ‘rating system’ into music content (mainly the ‘playlist’ now) created by the users, Spotify can qualify certain users with great achievement. And these qualified users can be invited as ‘experts’ to create more music content and provide feedbacks and inspirations with the actual artists.

Project requirement.

Users

Graphic Designers Agents* Labels Protection*

- Designing the content

- Updating the information

- React to the feedback

- Negotiate between users and artistis

- Protect property with legal supports.

Artists

Business Case.

Key stakeholders

#Creator #Spotify

- Legalised the progress

- Protecting both user’s and artist’s right.

* May require extra financial support

Users (can be listeners) with qualified success (likes/followers) in their creations.

Considering enabling more creativity and creating unique entertainment engagement as the design cores, this concept aims to bridge between general users and professional music creators intending to bring out more potential value. This concept was designed reflected to YouTube as the successful precedent case, who built up a profitable circulation exploring the potential influence of content creator (youtubers). Similarly, with this concept, Spotify can provide opportunities for people who has interests in creating music content to achieve their music dream. And, consequently, as the ‘Spotifier’ getting famous, it will bring back more exposure for Spotify, which enable Spotify positioning itself in a valuable circulation. Risk, even though, it can position Spotify in an innovative place in the industry, there are many potential threats as well, for example, the dispute of intelligent property, the security of private information particularly for the famous artists… Moreover, only the ‘playlist’ function can be regarded as a capable method for user creating more content, at the current stage, it will be challenging to build up an objective criterion for the ‘rating system’. However, it is believed that it will inspire users for more constructive ideas with the publishment of concept 02 (which can be generated through Concept 01).

Invited to create more music content with artists.

Concept explaination.

The third concept is focusing on creating collaborative and entertaining phenomenon within the user groups (mainly the listeners). By enabling with location sharing function, the mobile application of Spotify can pair up nearby people with the similar taste of music or nearby people who is listening to the same song, which gives users more opportunities to make new friends and connections.

STEP 2 STEP 1 STEP 3

Project requirement.

Concept 03. Business Case.

Location & Data

Graphic Designers Database* Privacy Sceurity

- Designing the content - Collecting data

- Aligning data

- Data security

- Privacy protection

* May require extra financial support

Key stakeholders

#Listeners #Spotify

Considering the socialisation value within the Listener groups, this concept attempt to qualify Spotify with socialising function based on the preference of music. The concept can be considered as an attractive point of Spotify and strengthen its industrial leading position from a different perspective. Lining up Spotify’s business with the cultural value of music which can be considered as a slighting core value of music other than the economic value, Spotify can be positioned in an advantageous place in the competitive market, and also offered itself with higher value to compete with other service providers with a technological background.

Risk, there is no doubt that Spotify will gain more value through extending music’s capability, however, there will be more responsibility for Spotify to bear at the same time. Privacy protection is the most significant threat that this concept could bring out.

Indicates finger gesture.

Clicking the functional button. Enabling sharing location. Connect to new friends.

Conclusion.

Comparing to the existing business model with the purposed design, it can be found that there are not many redesigns on the business model rather than creating more connection with different stakeholders and maximising the value for Spotify, creators, and listeners. Since Spotify’s current business model is still capable for the company to achieve their goals of providing 100% free music and earning constantly increasing profits, it unreasonable to make further design on it considered the potential challenges of innovation. By exploring the cultural value of music, more innovative designs are able to assisting Spotify to maintain its industrial leading position from a different and ground-breaking perspective.

Existing business model.

Creators (Artists and their team, labels, podcasters, rightholders, and more)

Purposed business model.

Additional Research.

Description Advantages Disadvantages

• Streams more than 75 million tracks

Apple Music

Now with lossless audio and Dolby Atmos support, Apple Music features a wide variety of radio stations, playlists, and other music-related content that make it one of the best music streaming services.

LiveXLive

The revamped LiveXLive combines the company's live music streams with Slacker Radio's knowledgeable DJs and deep music well to produce one of the most complete streaming music services on the market today.

SiriusXM Internet Radio

Combining live radio and traditional streaming audio services elements, SiriusXM Internet Radio boasts the features and content to keep music, news, and comedy fans happy for a long time to come.

Spotify

Amazon Music

Featuring a deep song library, podcasts, early album access, and collaborative playlists, Spotify reigns as a top-tier streaming music service.

• Cool video playlists

• 24/7 Apple Music radio stations & Apple Music TV video channel

• Family plan

• Rich Hi-Res Audio and Dolby Atmos sound

• Lyrics

• Excellently curated stations and fun playlists.

• Intuitive design.

• Informative DJs.

• Optional news updates.

• Massive content well encompassing live and curated channels.

• Large buffer lets you pause and rewind live radio.

• High-profile exclusive content.

• Video shows.

• Massive three-month free trial.

• Useful TuneStart and alert systems.

• Cool, collaborative playlists and Group Session options

• Optional desktop app that lets you play locally stored audio files

• Premium accounts let you hear select pre-released albums

• Customisable plan (Student, family, duo..)

• Podcasts

• Free version

Tidal, with its high-quality audio, music-related articles, and first dibs on tickets to hot concerts and sporting events, is one of the best and most unique streaming audio services around.

Amazon’s streaming audio service brings quality music, podcasts, and HD audio support to web browsers, mobile apps, and the company’s growing host of hardware.

Youtube Music

Leveraging Google’s massive information database, YouTube Music is an excellent, robust streaming music service that lets you search for songs by lyrics, find playlists based on your weather and location, and switch between an audio track and a music video with the tap of a button.

• Excellent sound quality, with optional Hi-Res Audio

• Long-form editorial pieces

• Music-focused podcasts

• Exclusive backstage content, live streams, and concerts

• Early access to select concert and sports tickets

• Large music library

• Cool scrolling lyrics

• Tight integration with Amazon device family

• HD and Ultra HD audio tiers

• Podcasts

• 90-day free trial

• Can seamlessly switch between audio and music videos

• Cool location- and time-based playlists

• Can search for songs by lyrics

• Collaborative playlists

• Family Plan

• Free version

• Lyrics

• No free version

• Besides comedy, no other non-music content

• Lossless audio not available on all platforms

• No family plan.

• Lacks lyrics.

• Some branding confusion.

• No free tier.

• Lacks a true family plan.

• No lyrics or artist/album information.

• Lacks Hi-Res Audio

• No lyrics in web or desktop apps

• Lacks lyrics

• No free version

• Lacks live radio

• No video content

• Doesn’t offer much non-music programming

• Lacks Hi-Res Audio

Tidal

Additional Research.

Music Industry.

Proportion (Between music privatisation and music socialisation) Music Concert/Opera

The Phonograph First time people can listen to music with the comfort of their homes.

Socialisation. Privatisation. Words indicate the causes.

Columbia Records

Music could be shared and sold.

The Vinyl

Walkman listeners

The RCA magnetic tape In Car tape player People enjoy driving with music playing. (Roadtrip, band tour)

MTV Launched New social activity of karaoke.

The CD

Digital Software Napster iPod and iTunes Legalising digital download of music

Music streaming service (Spotify)

Digital Concert

COVID-19

1900s

1950s

2000s

Now Time