#wavredesign

The Problem

The music industry is notorious for exploiting musicians, and we sought out to change this by putting artists first by giving them tools and benefits they need to grow their career. 

The first version of the WAV app proved that there’s a real opportunity for our initial business model. The initial app had a small number of curated artists which proved to be too small. So to fully support emerging artists and their fans, we sought to scale up the entire business and open up the platform for any artist. This allowed for more people, more content and more interactivity which encourages a self-sustaining community.

The Research

We conducted various brainstorming activities with artists to determine what their challenges are with the music industry and growing their career. We also surveyed fans to understand what current music apps are lacking in regards to music discovery.

Methods & Platforms

Usertesting.com for our qualitative research, I interviewed people from our demographic and guided them through usability studies for our new features.

Amplitude for our quantitative studies to measure clickthrough rates and build the roadmap with data

Conducted A/B Testing to continually improve the mobile app to ensure our users knew exactly how to find value in our product.

Project Goals

Based on our research we found that there was a need for an intimate connection between artists and fans. And for that to happen, we had to create a community where artists could express themselves and innovate within the platform, and fans could have the digital equivalent of a small-venue experience with breaking musicians.

Compelling Content

Encourage compelling and exclusive content for fans that allow them to connect with artists in a way that is more intimate than other streaming platforms.

We sought out to make content creation seamless and easy by optimizing our existing posting process. We also created a custom music visualizer tool that does not exist elsewhere.

Artist Management Tools

Create a publishing and brand management platform for artists with a built-in audience and a suite of tools that are optimized for their needs.

We added integration with their social platforms and aggregated valuable data about their fans, posts and performance.

Career Development

Build an artist development funnel within the industry that opens doors for artists to build a career while staying true to their vision.

We partnered with media outlets, events, music distribution and labels in the music industry as incentive for artists to engage with the platform.

WAV 2.0

Given our very short timeline and constrains, We had to propose alternative options to meet deadlines for our launch. One of the biggest reasons why we were successful was the detailed communication with the engineering team. Our headquarters and engineering team works out in NAVER HQ in South Korea, so the time difference and language barrier created a specific challenge that we had to overcome

Home

The old home feed made it challenging for users to explore new content. We decided to redesign the home feed to promote quality content at the top, shortcuts below, then a series of modules that evolve and update based on the users tastes as they engage with the content. The modules curate a balanced mix of whats popular on the platform, suggested content and users.

Custom Reacting Visualizers

Up and coming artists dont aways have the resources to create digital video assets, so we built a tool that allowed them to upload their music and create a sound-reacting visualizer. This was the first of its kind and helped us market our value to the artists.

Creator Management

We believe creators are partners in our platform. WAV and creators have a 80/20 split on all the tips and gifts they recieve from their fans. The creator management section allows them to track their earning from digital gifts each quarter and directly withdrawal to their connected paypal account.