Build the next generation of Spotify for Artists creator platform & analytics

Spotify is the world’s most popular music streaming platform with 345 million listeners in 93 countries. Spotify is going through its biggest redesign in a decade. As announced on March 8, 2023, at their annual Stream On event by CEO Daniel Ek, Spotify is transforming how listeners interact with and discover content on its home screen.

This major shift to promoting video content and offering new discovery features will help artists reach their fans where they are. These new features also will require a major redesign of the Spotify for Artists platform, where artists manage, promote, and measure their releases.

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Many artists didn’t know how to use Spotify for Artists to positively impact their business —they were intimidated by the data

Spotify’s goals:

Make new features more discoverable and comprehensible
Ensure Spotify for Artists features and tools delivered value to all types of artists
Discover opportunities to improve the how artists use S4A to grow their fan bases and earn revenue

The biggest challenge of this project is Spotify’s own success. They are the single biggest revenue source for the entire music industry. The Spotify for Artists platform is used by more than 200,000 artists around the world. It’s where artists manage, promote, and measure their releases.

To ensure that we made updates that improve the experience and success of all types of artists, we needed to carefully balance product discovery research with an ethnographic study of how artists use the platform to positively impact their careers.

We would accomplish this by:

Recruiting a pool of artists, label users, and managers who are representative of the 200,000 users of the platform
Deep exploration of the role Spotify for Artists plays in their decisions on and off platform, including the music they make, how they market themselves, and strategic business decisions
Working in a highly-collaborative manner with Spotify’s researchers, designers, writers, and product teams to ensure we’re constantly balancing desirability and feasibility
Defining success as improving the information architecture, analytics, and overall user experience

This project was divided into three phases:

Improving the non logged-in Spotify for Artists user experience
Improving the logged-in Spotify for Artists information architecture & user experience
Improving the effectiveness of analytics

Phase 1: Improving the non logged-in Spotify for Artists user experience

Analysis of Spotify for Artists versus top competitors to assess strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities
Co-creation of improvements to the logged-out S4A experience with internal stakeholders and users
Sprint-based, iterative testing of improvements to narrow in on an improved experience

Phase 2: Improving the logged-in Spotify for Artists information architecture & user experience

Ethnographic study of how different types of artists use S4A to inform music, marketing, and business decisions
Prioritization of JTBD and tools to ensure we’re focused on the success of users
Co-creation of improvements to the logged-in S4A experience with internal stakeholders and users
Sprint-based, iterative testing of improvements to narrow in on an improved experience

Phase 3: Improving the effectiveness of analytics

Ethnographic study of how different types of artists use S4A analytics, often in conjunction with other business intelligence tools or hacks
Co-creation to improve the analytics experience with internal stakeholders and users
Internal workshops to align on the future of analytics and prioritize the roadmap

PH1’s research & strategy projects with Spotify contributed to the redesign of Spotify for Artists platform, including: