Pro Indie Music, lead by experts in the Latin-American music industry, offers guidance and management services for artists from beginners to stablished talent.
MY ROLE
Visual Designer
PM
User Research
Interaction Design
Information Architecture
DURATION
3 Months
OBJECTIVE
To design a platform where artist can manage their own career and complete tasks to grow in the music industry
Overview
Pro Indie Music started managing their clients using social platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook groups. This allowed them to reach every artist in their portfolio in a single place but as the user base grew it proved unsustainable and hard to manage.
I was brought into this project to lead a design team and coordinate handoff with development
Research
On first contact with the stakeholders we focused on understanding how they see the product, who where they trying to help and define clear objectives for the project. While the product is focused on helping artists, it is also to be positioned as a tool for managers.
Before I was brought to the project, an MVP for the product was made but it did not reach the development stage. I decided to build on top of the previous research to define the requirements for this iteration of the product.
As research on the artist had already been done, to expand on this I decided we should interview who once where users of Pro Indie services but decided to stop, so we could better understand what they liked and how the platform had failed to meet their needs.
Another group not considered on the initial research were the managers, as the product is to be considered a tool for them, we had to discover which were the tasks managers had to do themselves and witch could be automated.
User Needs / Business Goals
From emerging artist we discovered one of the main incentives to grow in the music industry is interacting with other bands
From the managers we found the product could help then manage and assign task to artist, including the process of applying to be on festivals.
On the business side, in addition to structuring and showing the educational content from Pro Indie Music in a way artist could use it to grow in the industry, stakeholders wanted to implement a chat where artist could speak between then and also a social network where artists could promote their work and see what others where doing. Considering the budget and scope of the project, I desired we should only focus on the features that will deliver value to our users.
Considering their communication needs are already being met by other products which have become part of users workflows we decided to develop the next features
Growth plan for artists
The main value of the product is a plan, designed by industry leaders, that details tasks artist could use to grow their audience, as well as a system where artist can get feedback on every step of the process.
Content feed
On the main page users can find similar artists and get their contact info, promoting discovery and collaboration
The team behind the platform constantly updates and shares content on how to grow in the music industry, user can get this info on the feed so they never miss out
Participating in music festivas is key to grow, that why we designed a process in witch artists can have all their info ready and uploaded so they just have click a button to apply