Universal Music Group

Designing for the modern musician

Role

Creative Director
/ Experience Direction
/ Art Direction

Platform

Responsive Web

Year

2018

Timeline

4 Weeks of Design

Project Goal

Universal Music Group is one of the “big three” record labels in the world – with artists ranging from Taylor Swift to Metallica. As music has evolved from physical purchases to digital streaming Universal Music Group has been on the forefront of using the power of data to influence the decision-making process for artists, managers, and label-executives.

Ambition

“Make data shit hot”

Challenge

“WTF?! We’re flying blind!” -Managers

— The Aim

Prove the power
of data to propel
our artists

Adoption / Advocacy / Action

— Primary User Group

Managers

Managers are responsible for the performance of a large set of artists. These managers want the absolute best out of all of their artists, and want to continue to push them all to be #1.

A manager's job is complex, and requires coordination with artists, promoters, consultants, and label heads.

— Secondary

Artists

Artists' goal is to work their way up the charts, day by day, track by track. This platform is a tool that allows them to target the tours they play, in the countries they’re doing well in, in the cities who want them most.

To artists it is important that every marketing dollar is spent towards in the best plan possible.

— Tertiary

Label Heads

A music label manages the managers, they have a responsibility to ensure success of the label, as well as continuously finding the new artist that has potential to be their next star. Labels work on distribution, sales, and touring for their artist set, and this tool allows them to better set locations and tour geographies.

— From

Noise

Insight

Diagnostic

Data Positive

— To

Signal

Action

Predictive

Data Bold

— Design process

The process of this project was heavily influenced by the Google Sprint Design process — starting with empathize and define stages followed by divergent and convergent thinking methods with stakeholders.

The first week consisted of myself along with another designer sitting at UMG’s headquarters in Santa Monica learning, collaborating, sketching, and testing all in real-time. This allowed the project to move much more quickly, presenting ideas as they were born, driving early alignment on product direction.

Developing the
Information Architecture

Co-creating the information architecture was a critical part of the process. Universal's data and analytics team had been working on developing technical architecture that merged data sources of YouTube, Apple Music, and Spotify. The challenge was to understand what type of data was delivered and create a UX framework that could appropriately display the data individually or at aggregate.

Track information & insights

User interviews started discussion around the type of insights that would be the most interesting to see. Steam performance, audience, location, and platform all help to guide marketing efforts, tours, and playlist creation.

The dashboard was designed to answer the most common questions from both Artists and Managers.

Artist Questions
Am I gaining or losing listeners?
Where are my streams coming from?
Are any tracks at a tipping point?

Manager Questions
Who are my rising stars?
Who shows the most potential?
What are the best opportunties of regions, collaborations, and partnerships?
Where is the health in the catalog?

Music Catalog

Monitoring catalog performance is important, top songs can change with a new user-generated playlist on Spotify, or a track being recently added to a commercial. Understanding which tracks are doing well gives the Artist a better understanding of how to better market their music.

The result was a brand new digital platform that gives people total transparency into their insurance assets. The redesign increases user control and simplifies the mobile experience so people can be proactive and prepared well before any accident ever occurs.

A brand new digital platform that gives people total transparency into their insurance assets. The redesign increases user control and simplifies the mobile experience so people can be proactive and prepared well before any accident ever occurs.

Audience

The audience tab allows artists and managers to view the overall pulse of the music and understand the overall reach the music has. "Streams per listener" is a useful metric in determining how fans react to the music, if they are listening to the same track on repeat, it is a great metric of success.

Ear to the ground

Everybody has a job to do. Musicians make music, roadies carry the guitars and now Universal Music Artist plays the data scientist— discovering your newest fanbase is a village in Guam. Time to start planning the next tour.

Learnings

We were able to conduct just enough research and interviews with Artists and Label-heads to understand the customer perspective and drive the product forward quickly. Working directly in files and sketches with data managers and engineers was incredibly inspiring, watching this product’s structure and design come together in literally a matter of days and then built in a matter of weeks.

Building a modular, component-based analytics library to support different artist and manager needs proved to be successful as the project evolved. Each of these components was scalable to all breakpoints.

Outcomes

The first version of the product was launched in late 2019. Since then we’ve been working with Artists and Managers on ways to improve the product based on both quantitative and qualitative data. Additional streaming platforms will be added to the platform as it scales, and UMG for Artists continues to grow in ways to analyze and interpret data in meaningful ways.