As an audio-streaming and sharing platform, SoundCloud allows users to be both listeners and creators, fostering the diverse creation of niche genres and music that is original to SoundCloud. Despite cultivating such a diverse large selection of music, SoundCloud’s songs recommendation often falls under HipHop and Rap, which limits exposure for other genres. We saw this as a missed opportunity to appeal to its niche audience. Jump to solution.
Therefore for our 6-weeks senior experience design project at SFU, through extensive case studies and ideation, we proposed an additional way of discovery on top of what SoundCloud is currently doing by leveraging the social aspect that is unique to the brand.
To ground our project so it caters specifically to our client, we identified SoundCloud’s Brand Pillars that help to align our designs to their values.
During the field research of the music industry, we noticed that only SoundCloud is offering a wide range of social aspects from commenting on the specific timestamp in the music, reposting music, and direct message which allows discussion to happen on the platform.
With everyone having equal and easy access to upload their music to SoundCloud, the platform became a place to discover new and pioneering music from all genres. With the current system and algorithm, SoundCloud is creating friction by burying the niche genres under bigger tracks, making hidden gems literally hidden.
How might we increase the likelihood for hidden gems to be discovered?
Through our initial research, we found out that since SoundCloud’s peak of 150 million registered users in 2015, they have lost 49% of their users by 2020. This was caused by the imbalance of what the users are interested in listening to and engaging with, which consists more of niche music genres, and what the platform had been continuously surfacing which falls under Hip-Hop and Rap from well-known musicians.
SoundCloud has struggled with the relevance and precision of their recommendations and many have departed from the platform due to this kind of ‘musical Russian roulette’.
– Jennie Silber, Music Recommendation Algorithms: Discovering Weekly or Discovering Weakly?
Through 8 of our user interviews with current SoundCloud users and artists, we narrowed down our target audience into SoundCloud listeners who aren’t there on the platform for bigger music genres but wanted to explore smaller tracks and genres. We also identified common listening behaviours for music enthusiasts through secondary research. Which we concluded into three major behaviours.
Two new ways of music discovery in SoundCloud that extends on SoundCloud's current music search. This feature emphasizes user-to-user recommendations and an audio-focused browsing experience. We intentionally designed these features to be desktop-first as based on our user interviews, all participants search for new music inspiration through the web version on their desktop.
Users are able to hover through tracks to hear a preview of the most-engagement section. Song details will appear after hovering longer than two seconds, providing more options to explore. On top of that, we added micro-interactions in the song details such as the filter tag, and direct link to the user's profile based on the songs that were pulled in; extending more discovery pathways.
Users can find and choose to listen to music while feeling in control of the content they receive. This provides the user with an aspirational value of their sense of achievement to be able to find niche genres and music that others haven't.
This community-led song recommendation allows users to add their own song suggestions under individual song pages. This helps other listeners to discover more music that they might listen to next, allowing them to create more trustworthy song recommendations on the platform. Providing the recommender's profile allow other people to visit their profile and see how compatible their music tastes are, allowing more connections to happen.
Users can seamlessly discover and indulge in music while experiencing a profound sense of control over the content they receive and consume. This behavior fosters a greater sense of achievement and connectivity to SoundCloud, empowering them to explore niche genres and uncover new music that others may not have stumbled upon yet.
By curating personalized music selections tailored to their preferences, we believe that our interviention brings tangible value to SoundCloud, enhancing the platform's market retention and enriching the overall music discovery experience in the platform.
Big thank you to my members, the teaching team, mentors, and our peers for the support during this project.