Share on Spotify
As a Spotify listener who loves sharing music with friends, I came up with a feature that allows for easy collection of suggestions from friends within Spotify
role:
Product Designer
UI Design
UX design
Working within established brand identity
This is a personal project
Step one: Discover
The problem:
Sharing songs via Spotify is easy and fun, but collecting the suggestions is tedious and disorganised.
Business goals:
There are social features on Spotify, like creating a playlist that combines you and your friends’ music taste, or watching your friends activity.
There is an opportunity to expand upon those social features in order to drive more people to join Spotify - by making it the easiest platform to share music with friends.
Spotify data
55% of users
Have registered to Spotify with their Facebook accounts
29% of users
are between the ages of 25-34 (Millennials), the biggest group on the app. They’re followed by Gen Z (18-24) with 26%
36% of playlists
are UGC (User Generated Content), 17% are personalised playlists, and 15% are curated
Step two: Define
User stories
-
As a person who gets a lot of music recommendations from friends, I would like to collect it easily in one place so that I can listen to them
-
As a person who shares a lot of music, I would like to send my friends songs without leaving the app
ideation
Desktop app
Despite 52% of Spotify users opting for the mobile app, I decided to first focus on the Spotify desktop app, as this was the current platform that displays the “friends activity” window. This means Spotify prioritises social features on that device compared to others, which would be a good space to launch this feature in.
Automatic Playlist
In order to make sure the recommendations are separated from users’ music identity, I thought of the idea of an automatic playlist that collects songs shared by others. From the back-end perspective, this playlist can be disregarded when it comes to users’ musical preference, in case they listen to many songs they end up… well, hating (our friends don’t always know best!)
Share on Spotify
On the desktop version, there are fewer sharing options compared to the mobile version. This is why, in my opinion, adding another option would not overwhelm the users too much. It would also make it easier to send the song directly via the app instead of searching for other messaging or social media platforms.
Sentimental Exchange
When ideating for possible solutions, I was inspired by the sentimental act of giving friends mixtapes (an act that’s become quite obsolete in recent years). Those gifts are best kept in a special folder or box (my mother always told me to keep items in a “designated place” so that I’ll always know where to look for them when I need to).
“As a person who gets a lot of music recommendations, I would like to collect it easily in one place so that I can listen to them”
“As a person who shares a lot of music, I would like to send my friends songs without leaving the app”
Step three: Develop
I came up with the idea of having the song suggestions appear inside the “friends activity” window on the desktop application, and used the established users and songs designs to create a pop-up alert window for new song suggestions.
The playlist itself is designed similarly to other Spotify-created playlists, and I borrowed several visual components from the “friends blend” playlist.
Feature #1
Songs can be shared within Spotify using the desktop application.
Choose between one or several users to send the song to. Users would have to mutually follow each other to enable song exchanges. Users can also block everyone or particular friends from sending songs to minimise spamming or harassment.
Feature #2
Suggested songs will appear inside the “friends activity” window of the desktop application.
After accepting the song, it will be added to the curated playlist. The button changes to allow you to navigate to that playlist immediately.
Feature #3
All songs sent from friends within Spotify are collected into an automated “Recommended by Friends” playlist.
You’ll be able to see which friend (or friends) suggested the song, and whether to keep or remove them automatically after listening. You can also opt to notify the friend who suggested the song when you liked it.
Step Four: Deliver
I created an interactive prototype in Figma to showcase the two user flows.
How would we measure success?
over 30%
Of Desktop users using the “Send on Spotify” in the first month of launch
over 70%
of users adding and listening to songs curated using the dedicated playlist
10% increase
In activity on the desktop application
Project
Reflections
Business prioritisation
At the end of 2022, it was reported that over 52% of Spotify users listen to music using their mobile application. Whilst I couldn’t find exact percentage of users for the desktop application, it is not the most popular device for Spotify users. This is why I would assume Spotify would rather focus on developing features for their mobile app first. However, like I mentioned, there are social features already available on the desktop app, and expanding upon them, in my opinion, could result in another edge over competitors. Additionally, adding new social features could awaken dormant users or convert new potential users to join the app and increase Spotify’s market share even further.
Mobile availability
Despite the plethora of sharing options available on the mobile app, if successful, I do believe the feature should be expanded to mobile. Firstly, because, as mentioned before, this is users’ main device of choice, and secondly, because it will allow for a more fluid flow and would retain the users inside the app.
Limited testing
I wish to conduct user testing on this feature. It could be released as a beta for a pool of active desktop users. With user feedback and further activity data, I will be able to assess what other features are necessary to develop in order to make this feature more viable to a wider range of users.