Pandora Music

Bringing Artist Featured Tracks to AMP Mobile

Pandora is a music streaming service that offers personalized listening experiences through curated stations and playlists.

Role

Product Designer

Timeline

May 2022 - August 2022

Motivation

Make promoting music more intuitive and guided

Overview

Pandora’s AMP mobile platform provides artists with a powerful tool to promote their music, but the process of featuring tracks was somewhat disconnected and difficult to navigate.

As part of a larger initiative to bring the artists’ experience to mobile, I was tasked with enhancing the experience for artists to feature tracks seamlessly through AMP mobile. This would allow artists to engage more effectively with Pandora’s self-service tools and reach new listeners with their music.

Problem

Artists lacked an intuitive, guided experience to feature tracks on Pandora’s AMP mobile platform. Despite the availability of the “Featured Tracks” tool, the process was cumbersome, especially for first-time users. The existing workflow didn’t provide adequate guidance for artists to understand when and how to feature their tracks, which led to confusion and missed opportunities for boosting their music.

To feature a track on desktop, users must create a campaign manually

Design Challenge

Create a user-friendly flow that helps artists easily feature their tracks on the AMP mobile platform, ensuring a smooth and intuitive experience that encourages more frequent use of the feature.

Research & Discovery

I collaborated with a UX Research Intern to conduct in-depth competitive analysis and user research. 

Snapshot of our competitive analysis

We evaluated how other music streaming platforms guided artists through similar promotional tools and identified best practices.

Additionally, we surveyed 5 AMP users to understand their pain points and needs, which helped us validate the most critical areas of improvement.

Through this research, we found that artists wanted a more streamlined experience with clear, guided steps on how to feature their tracks, as well as notifications on eligibility and deadlines.

Concept & Design

After gathering insights, we started the design process by iterating on potential solutions. 

I worked closely with a PM Intern to create a requirement document, which outlined the functional and user experience requirements for the new feature.

Based on this, I proposed a feature called “It’s Time,” which provided a simple, step-by-step process directly on the AMP dashboard for artists who met the necessary criteria to feature a track.The design focused on three key areas –

01 Eligibility Check

Artists would be notified if their track was eligible to be featured based on the established criteria, such as a track being spun at least 10 times per week.

02 Clear Steps

The dashboard would display a sequence of steps for artists to follow, ensuring they understood the actions needed to feature a track

03 Notifications

Artists would receive notifications when the feature was active or when they needed to take action.

I also worked with the team to ensure that the new flow aligned with Pandora’s branding and platform guidelines. This involved multiple rounds of design iterations, incorporating feedback from stakeholders and the team.

Initial wireframe explorations for the "It's Time" feature

Implementation & Results

The final design was handed over to the AMP mobile platform team for development. Based on initial feedback, artists would be able to feature tracks seamlessly through the new flow, and the design was expected to lead to a more intuitive user experience once live.

Learnings and Insights

01 Increased Engagement

The redesigned flow was expected to lead to a higher engagement rate for the “Featured Tracks” tool, as artists would better understand how to use the feature.

02 User Satisfaction

Early feedback from surveys indicated that artists would find the new workflow much easier to navigate.

03 PERFORMANCE METRICS

When compared to a normal track on Pandora, a "featured track" typically shows significantly higher metrics.

+32%
more spins

Scrunch received 18% more visitors each month expanding the user base to 20k+ active users.

+41%
more thumbs

Scrunch received 18% more visitors each month expanding the user base to 20k+ active users.

+59%
more thubs up

Scrunch received 18% more visitors each month expanding the user base to 20k+ active users.

+88%
more seeds

Scrunch received 18% more visitors each month expanding the user base to 20k+ active users.

Pandora’s Best of Me’ Track Metrics Spotlight featuring BTS

NEXT PROJECT

A new digital appearance for the Scrunch platform