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Spotify Stations
Stations is Spotify’s second consumer app. It offers a radio-like experience to target low-effort users who find streaming apps too complicated and who want to quickly play music.
Case Study
Time: 4 Months
Team: App Integrations
Role: Product Design Lead
Stations is designed on the idea that playing music should never feel like work. The core user experience is easy to navigate and contained in a single view that invites exploration.
Playback is immediate – no need to hit play, and changing up the music is as simple as a scroll. Users don’t have to go through multiple interactions to start listening.
I embedded with the Stations team for 2.5 weeks to improve content programming and prepare for its rollout in the US and other markets.
For me it was an opportunity to apply my learnings on Discovery to a search-less app UI.
Now Playing
A screenshot of Spotify’s “Now Playing” view shared on Instagram Stories.
Research
Previously, the team conducted a 4-day long diary study with a group of 20 participants who live in Australia. The study focused on their Day 1 to Day 3 usage. To reflect the AB test, we had a mix of participants who received genre taste onboarding and some who did not receive any taste onboarding.
Users aren’t seeing relevant content. The Stations UI was designed for people to quickly play music. Search was left out by design. Instead, Stations start playing immediately, and changing to a different station is as easy as simple as a scroll. But without a search feature, Stations users were having trouble finding relevant content.
Pros
Stations with “Classic” and dates (90s Hits) in the title performed well
Decades genres were popular (50s, 60s, 70s): Music triggered memories of what they listened to as a child or teenage years (especially on stations like Punk, Rock & Roll, or the decade categories)
Music played felt very connected to their taste (for the stations the liked)
Stations included music that they haven’t heard for a while
Cons
Overall, Genre Stations performed poorly - they liked the experience but not the music
People were unhappy when a station did not match their expectations - Genres not match expectations
“The stations that I thought would have a certain type of music in it, didn’t.”
Missing Genres
Those who had strong affinities for specific genres noticed when it was missing from the station list and wanted to see them added. In some cases, it was their top/most favorite genres missing causing them to be disappointed that an “important” genre was not there.
Less advanced music literacy leads to trouble finding the termss to characterize their particular tastes
“It’s a mix of different time periods and it wasn’t what I was expecting. Same as Soul, I’m looking for 70-80s soul, not what it is right now, which tends to be rap. The mixture of generations is confusing.”
Instead of generic “Pop” and “Rock” stations, have more specific stations with descriptive names
Our users prefer more specific genre names with older music.
Create more genres with specific time periods, particularly in the 60s, 70s, and 80s
Put “classic” music at the top of the scroll-down menu so it is more noticeable and accessible
Users expect content to stay fresh - Song fatigue - Not enough songs
“I heard the same songs played throughout the day. I expect to not have any repeats, otherwise I would listen to Top 40 FM.”
Increase seeds
Include static and dynamic playlists - (updated)
Limit number of times a song is played
Add skip functionality
Mission Statement
Allow low-effort users to find music they like quickly, with minimal effort.
Goals
Improve content of existing stations - content programming
Improve genres and reduce repetition.
Allow customization through creation of new stations (artist stations)
We can increase the reach of each share by increasing the number of viewers. Unlike direct messages that are mostly one-to-one shares, Stories allow sharing content from one-to-many.
Create a warm-start experience with personalized recommendations to ease people into the app
We can increase the consumption of shares by providing a link to easily listen to the song on Spotify.
Music Identity
Sketches from the team’s brainstorming session explored ways for users to express their “Music Identity” through Stories.
Exploration
I led a cross-functional design sprint to explore how the team could leverage the strengths of the Stories platform to empower users to share their music identities. I started our brainstorm session with Crazy Eights exercises to sketch out ideas. We each shared our favorite ideas and discussed them as a group.
The team’s sketches explored music video effects, artist masks, lip syncing, virtual instruments, face-swapped cover art, visualizations of listening data, and location-based AR experiences. After the session, I synthesized the group’s ideas and evaluated each one based on:
Resource investments
Scalability
Licensing requirements
Virality
Alignment with the Spotify brand
The team voted on its favorite ideas. We fleshed out the concepts, I created animated prototypes for the most popular directions, and I made an experience catalog to share them with potential partners like Instagram, Snapchat, and Musical.ly (now TikTok).
Animated Prototypes
I created prototypes to show how users could share their music habits with compelling Stories.
Artist Lenses
Unlock custom lenses by listening to songs from popular artists. Unlocking provides exclusivity and authenticity to an artist’s biggest fans, but we’d need to develop custom assets and receive artist approval on a case-by-case basis. Although this was one of the most popular ideas, it was not scalable for the first iteration.
Playlist Filters
Be the cover artist on your favorite Spotify playlists. Unlike Artist Lenses, Playlist Filters give us flexibility and control over the assets, but they’re not as compelling to our users. Tracks represent 81% of the content shared from Spotify. Playlists are the second most shared content type, but they only represent 11% of shares. Playlist Filters would not optimize for the most common use case.
Now Playing Sticker
Quickly share what you’re listening to on Spotify. It’s automatically generated based on your “Now Playing” status, so it reduces the friction of manually searching for songs. At the same time, it provides authenticity since it only shows the current song you’re listening to. This was the most viable concept, so I iterated on additional executions around this idea.
Now Playing Explorations
I explored different executions to visualize a listener’s “Now Playing” status. AR lenses made a return in the form of headphones with music notes and song info animating above the user’s head. Other filters featured Spotify playlist branding, with song info replacing playlist titles.
One quick note about music rights. Artists make money by licensing their music to stream on Spotify. Another way artists make money is by licensing the rights to their songs for use in films, videos, television shows, and commercials. These are called sync rights because they allow the licensee to synchronize music with visual images.
The user-generated images and videos in Stories fall under this use case. Spotify does not currently have these rights, so any integration with the Stories platform cannot feature music directly from Spotify. Spotify is even at risk if users find a workaround to play music in their Stories, as long as the Spotify logo and song information are visible.
Share to Instagram Stories
The Share to Instagram Stories user flow.
Instagram Stories
We began working with the Instagram team in February 2018. The legal team was concerned about sync rights issues if users shared songs in their stories.
To get around this restriction, the final design blocks user-generated content with a color extracted background. We chose this implementation because it parallels the look of the “Now Playing” view, and since it’s generated based on the album art, it helps to keep the visual of the Stories fresh.
Users can share tracks, playlists, albums, and artists to Instagram Stories with a link to listen to the content on Spotify. They can resize and reposition the album artwork and customize their Story with stickers and text.
Story View
Viewers can tap the link at the top of the Story to listen to the song on Spotify.
Feature Launch
The feature was announced on stage at F8 in May 2018.
Impact
TheSpotify’s second consumer facing app
Spotify App Store Rating 4.8 across 8.11M ratings
Spotify Stations 4.7 Rating across 4.64K ratings
Review
5 Stars - Very easy and intuitive interface. Choose an artist, genre or mood and the station instantly starts playing. Make a dozen in about 5 minutes and have an easy way to switch between stations with instant-on music! I had no idea, but this is the music experience that I’ve needed. It’s most likely best for people who just want to listen to a type of music with the least amount of effort. Have not used it long enough to know the depth of the playlists… but initial use and experience has exceeded expectations.
5 Stars - okay I has low expectations bc I liked the other app so much but in all honesty I’ve been using Stations exclusively for a few weeks now and I LOVE it. I wish in some of my stations there was a wider variety of songs played (sometimes I just get the same few songs on rotation) but otherwise I really enjoy it. The layout is simple and very appealing to look at and there are just enough buttons to make the app useful but not cluttered. I totally love this and I don’t wanna go anywhere else for music.
5 Stars - This app shows greatness from genre and moods and my favorite part is it is so quick to switch stations I love it so much this is an good app just try it out 🙂
5 Stars - I like the idea of picking a station I am letting them play. It’s very accessible with voiceover and since I am a voiceover user I appreciate this. Keep up the good work!
Artist Tools
Artists like Selena Gomez and Charlie Puth are using the feature to engage with their followers.
Improvements
User testing revealed the Spotify attribution was too small. Users also expected their Stories to include audio clips of the shared song.
We were not able to address these items before launch, but we addressed them when we partnered with the Facebook Stories team to build the feature for their platform. The success of the Share to Instagram Stories feature allowed the team to negotiate with music labels for the use of audio clips in Facebook Stories. The integration with Facebook Stories also includes animations and a larger CTA to play the song on Spotify.
New Spotify features open up additional opportunities for sharing. Spotify Canvas is a creative tool that gives artists the ability to upload their own visual loops to accompany their songs. Future iterations of this feature could leverage these animations to create even more visually compelling artist Stories.
Next Steps
The integration with Facebook Stories features improvements like audio clips and a more noticeable Spotify playback link. Future iterations of the feature could leverage Canvas to create stronger visual Stories that utilize the strengths of the platform.
