Despite hosting exclusive content, SoundCloud repeatedly recommends mainstream songs from the hip-hop and rap genres despite the user’s previous listening history, therefore, limiting exposure to its niche genres.
We saw this as an existing pain point within SoundCloud’s user base, specifically listeners of niche genres which caused them to leave the platform.
Through our initial research, we discovered that at its peak, SoundCloud had over 150 million registered accounts in 2015. However, this number decreased by 49% by 2020 due to its disparity between what users are interested in listening to, consisting of niche genres not found on other platforms, compared to SoundCloud’s continuous recommendations of mainstream genres, particularly within the hip hop and rap genres.
After conducting 8 user interviews, we catered towards listeners of niche genres as our main target audience who want to explore and find smaller, hidden artists/songs. Through our interviews as well as conducting secondary research on SoundCloud’s existing user base, we identified three common behaviours:
Enjoy exploring by delving into rabbit holes, resulting in more rewarding discovery outcomes
Actively listen while streaming music to select songs they truly enjoy
Trusting human-curated music recommendations more so than computer-algorithmic recommendations
This led to us narrowing our target audience to music lovers seeking hidden gems within niche genres.
How might we increase the likelihood of niche genres being discovered?
To cater the intervention towards SoundCloud, we identified the platform’s main brand pillars as our guiding principles:
Social Community:
SoundCloud fosters a social community within its platform by allowing its users to post comments on timestamps in music, reposting music, and direct messaging.
Hidden Gems:
With users allowed to upload their musical creations, SoundCloud hosts a wide variety of niche genres, providing an opportunity to discover new obscure music/artists.
Using SoundCloud’s brand pillars as our guiding principles, this led us to framing the problem as:
Leveraging the community aspect into our intervention, we propose two new ways to discover music within SoundCloud that acts as an extension to the platform’s existing search features as well as a redesigned profile page.
This feature allows users to quickly browse and preview a collection of tracks that are recommended often by other users.
Users would be able to hover over the thumbnail of the track which would play the section that has the most engagement by listeners.
We added micro-interactions where hovering over a thumbnail reveals the track's music tag, the user’s profile, and plays a preview of the most-commented section. This interaction lets users feel more in control of their music experience, tailoring song recommendations to their preferences and social connections.
This also provides aspirational value for the user as it provides a sense of reward as they have more opportunities to find more niche genres and tracks.
Leveraging the community aspect that SoundCloud currently offers, our second way of discovering niche music is by adding a “Recommendation activity” to the user’s page. This would allow other users visiting each other’s pages to discover more music that they might listen to based on what other users that they follow are recommending.
Given the incentive to explore other users with similar music tastes, it fosters a deeper sense of community within SoundCloud.
We added dark mode to the desktop version, a long-requested feature that reflects the vibrant underground music community. It enhances track artwork with greater contrast and highlights it on the search page, inviting users to discover music visually rather than through text.
For users:
With our proposed intervention, users of SoundCloud would be able to feel more in control in terms of what music content they consume, prompting them to explore niche genres further.
For business:
Our proposed intervention would bring tangible value to the overall SoundCloud experience, enriching the overall discovery experience and, therefore, retaining more of its users.
Over five weeks, we designed an expressive microsite for Amsterdam Sinfonietta’s Bosch Requiem, guided by Wolfgang Weingart’s design qualities and principles to create a bold and engaging pre-purchase experience.
5 Weeks
(SEP. 2022 - OCT. 2022)
Visual Designer
Motion Designer
Interaction Designer
