Chord Music Streaming
Chord is a project based on the belief that music has the ability to evoke powerful emotional responses in listeners. Music can have a positive, immediate impact on our mental state, and listening to music can alter mood or relieve stress. At the end of 2021, 539 million people subscribed to music streaming services to listen to music, but that is all they could do. Chord sets out to imagine a music experience that can offer users and creators so much more.
Current Music Streaming Services.
Current music streaming services act as a utility. The sole focus of their service is to provide users a way to listen to music, but music is much more than simply listening. Chord aims to design a music streaming service that encapsulates the entirety of music consumption while moving music streaming forward to an ecosystem of features that break the silos dominating the current market.
How is Music Consumed?
While current music streaming solutions function as a utility, music is much more. The icons above represent just a few examples of a holistic music experience. Current music streaming services lose out on pools of potential revenue by not including these adjacent features in their catalogue of features.
Market Breakdown.
While there are many competitors in the music streaming service, there are a handful of standouts. The clear leader in the market is Spotify while Apple Music and Amazon music are also large competitors at play. Amazon Music and Apple music have the benefit of an extensive product range that justifies their service ecosystem to their users. Spotify establishes user retention with a minimal, intuitive UI.
Source: MIDiA Research Music Model
Benchmarking.
The five features depicted above will be the criteria for benchmarking existing apps. The apps being benchmarked are Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Youtube Music, Soundcloud, and Bandcamp.
Benchmarking Results.
Benchmarking was done for all graphed applications and services. The goal was to accomplish a set series of tasks in each app respectively. If a feature was not provided on the app, that was represented as a time the user would have to leave the app to accomplish this task. After this study was completed, all of the apps were graphed based on more features vs. time users exited app.
Time Breakdown.
Users spend, on average, fifty more minutes a day on social media than they do listening to music. Current music streaming solutions have little to no social capabilities. Incorporating aspects of social media into a music streaming solution would increase the amount of time users spend in the app.
Sources: Statista Research Department and Edison Research
User Personas.
Design Goals.
When designing Chord, three areas of focus were chosen: Extensive Range of Features, Social Capabilities, and Artist Empowerment. More features will allow users to more holistically consume music, social capabilities will allow users to freely engage with friends and communities about music, and Artist empowerment will allow artists to better grow their brand and fan base
Color Palette Inspiration.
A blue color palette was chosen for Chord. This was done as a way to help bridge a music streaming service over to social media. Blue evokes a calm and welcoming feeling in most users, and is already used in many popular social medias services.
Font and Palette.
Inter was chosen as the font for Chord because it is a very scalable font and it’s accessible to most users. Because of these benefits, Inter would allow Chord to be adapted to more devices at a faster rate, allowing Chord’s ecosystem of features to grow as well.
Branding Inspiration.
Chord was designed to feel like something new but also something timeless. Because of this, multiple classic music brands were studied. A huge commonality stuck out between each of these brands. Their branding all featured script logos. With this in mind, Chord would also feature a script logo.
Branding and Logo.
An original brand will be utilized for this project. The name Chord was chosen to symbolize the harmony of the extensive features working together in an intuitive way. Treating every feature like a musical note, the name chord is derived.
Neumorphic Inspiration.
The layout of the Chord app was heavily inspired by famed designer Mario Bellini’s Olivetti calculator. This gives Chord a timeless feel and allowed the design to stay minimal without compromising hierarchy and the tactile feel of a physical product.
Neumorphic Affordances.
Inspired by the Olivetti calculator, neumorphic affordances were created for the application. Neumorphic affordances allow a very minimal page layout to be utilized while providing the user with a tactile response, similar to what would be found on a physical product.
Ergonomics.
This graphic depicts the difficulty level for a user to reach different areas of the screen. Frequently used affordances on the app were placed in the green and yellow section, while the orange and red section were used mainly for graphics.
Wireframe Sketching.
Final Design.
Home.
The Home page is where the app launches and many of the key features are stored. There are three main sections of the home page and users can also navigate to the rest of the app from here.
Home: Main.
The Main section of the Home page is similar to existing streaming services. This area is for quickly accessing music. Here the app will recommend music to users, and also users can pin music here.
Home: Social.
The Social section of the Home page allows users to view their feed. Here they can see what their friends are listening to and music related posts. Users can also create posts here for all of their followers to see.
Home: News.
The News section of the Home page will present users with news articles related to the music they’re interested in. Users can also filter what type of articles they see and share these articles with their friends.
Home Walkthrough.
A video walkthrough was created for the three sections of the Home page. This shows how users would navigate through it.
Listening.
The listening area of Chord was designed to keep all controls well within reach of all users. It also features an EQ library and an equalizer so users can customize their listening experience.
Search.
The Search page of Chord will first present users with a variety of genres they can explore. Once users start typing, relevant results will appear.
Artist Page.
The Artist section is meant to thoughtfully provide users with additional features relevant to music consumption.
Artist Page: Videos.
Users will be able to view videos related to the artist they’re searching. Users will be presented with live performances, music videos, interviews, and much more. Users will also be able to filter what kind of videos they are shown.
Artist Page: Merchandise.
Artists will be able to have an online store right on their artist page. This merchandise is curated by the artists and users will be able to purchase it all in-app.
Artist Page: Events.
Users will be able to view all live events related to the artist they are searching. They will also be able to buy tickets in-app and use these tickets with Chord wallet.
Artist Page Walkthrough.
A video walkthrough was created for the Artist page. This shows how users would navigate through it.
Library.
The Library page will show users their recent activity. Users can also navigate through multiple categories to view and listen to their saved content.
Library Continued.
Depicted above are the library categories of saved content users can navigate through.
Profile.
The profile section was created to encourage users to engage with the music they’re listening to. From here, users can also message each other. Users can also access multiple categories that allow them to track and share the music they’re listening to, like creating a listenlist of albums they intend to listen to
Profile Continued.
Depicted above are some of the categories offered in the profile section. These categories include an Album diary, in-app messaging, Posts & Reviews, and an area to view your followers.
Chord Wallet.
Chord Wallet is stored in the profile section of Chord. Chord Wallet allows users to buy and use event tickets all in-app. It also allows users to add payment methods and purchase merchandise in-app.
Other Devices.
The idea of Chord was to reimagine how music is consumed and to create an ecosystem of features for users. With this in mind, it was imagined what Chord could look like on other devices and how it could modernize some areas of the music industry.
Apple Watch.
Chord was depicted on an Apple Watch to emphasize the accessibility of the service. Chord wallet could also be used on an Apple Watch to redeem purchased event tickets.
iPad.
Chord was depicted on an iPad to show how the service could scale on a larger device.
MacBook.
Chord was also depicted on a MacBook to show how the service scales. The benefit of a larger screen is it allows more key features to stay on the screen at the same time.
Chord TV.
Everything that is old is new again! One overlooked area of music streaming is music videos. MTV dominated the music industry in the 1980s and music videos still play an important part for users. Chord TV was created to modernize a classic music service. This adjacent service would be provided for Chord users and allows them to select music video playlists to watch on their TV.
Vehicle Display.
A vehicle display was also imagined for Chord. This was done to finish the proposed ecosystem of features where users could easily listen to Chord anywhere.
DAAPWorks Presentation.
Chord was created to be presented in the 2022 University of Cincinnati DAAPWorks show. Here is a photo of me presenting Chord to a panel of industry professionals. The feedback from that critique was applied to the updated version of Chord in this portfolio.