Music Ally

UK design and usability agency ExperienceLab recently completed a piece of independent research into online music services, rating four of the key players in the UK for downloading, streaming, organising, discovering and sharing music.

Assistant consultant David Loughlin shared a topline summary with Music Ally, including some of ExperienceLab’s tips for best practice when running a music service. We thought you might find it of interest, so it’s reproduced below.

“ONLINE MUSIC SERVICES USER EXPERIENCE – AUGUST 2009

Introduction

The growth of online music services has changed the way that people discover, buy, organise and listen to music. The way that services support these activities plays a key role in their success. At ExperienceLab, we carry out experience design and usability research to help clients produce simple and satisfying products and services.

With Virgin, Sky and BT set to launch online music services in the coming months, we decided to take a look at the user experience of some of the key players in the UK market. This article presents a summary of what we found and offers some usability tips for designers and developers working in this competitive market.

We looked at four of the leading suppliers of online music services in the UK: iTunes, Spotify, Last.fm, and Nokia Music. The following sections look at some of the activities they support.

SEARCHING FOR MUSIC

Users should be able to scan and sort search results quickly
Effective search and browse functions are essential for a successful download service. One of the main issues we found was that if a search returned many results, it was sometimes difficult to find a target item within them. The Nokia Music Store for example, presents each result beside a thumbnail and it is not possible to sort them. This means that results are spread over many pages and the only way to look through them is to click through each page. iTunes and Spotify present results in lists that can be sorted by artist, genre etc. This makes it much easier to find items within the search results.

DISCOVERING MUSIC

Being able to monitor and learn about users’ listening habits puts online music services in a great position to recommend music. Recommendations can be based on a single song or on more general information about a user’s library or listening habits.

If a recommendation area is provided, populate it where possible
We found that for song specific recommendations, an appropriate suggestion was not always available. In Nokia Music, this results in a blank recommendation area which can be frustrating but also means that the area may be checked less frequently – if it’s often blank, why check it?. iTunes Genius uses other tags in the songs meta data (e.g., genre) to generate suggestions.

Make sure recommendations are appropriate
Recommendations based on libraries and listening habits are only as good as the information they collect. This can lead to poor quality recommendations, particularly for new users which could make them less likely to stick around. A quick glance at the forums finds a few bemused Spotify users discussing their Hip-Hop recommendations. Last.fm deals with this by importing listening histories from other media players making its recommendations helpful and appropriate from the start.

DOWNLOADING MUSIC

It should be clear to users when they can download a song and how it can be done
In some services the download option is difficult to find. Spotify does offer a download option (supported through 3rd party suppliers) but it is located in a right click context menu where it is unlikely to be used. This might cause problems if they aim to generate traffic to 3rd party sites as part of their business model. Nokia Music and iTunes provide a clear call to action in the form of a Download or Buy Song button.

If a preview is available, this should also be clear
In the iTunes Store it is not clear that a preview is available, nor is it clear how to start a preview. Nokia Music provides a clearly labelled 30sec button which is more effective.

Display the current balance
Displaying a user’s current balance also helps them to know when they can download songs. If a user has unlimited access to downloads, this should also be made clear.

STREAMING MUSIC

We found two styles of streaming on offer in the services we looked at: queue style (where songs are selected and queued by the user) and radio style (where seeds, genres and tags are used to generate an appropriate stream of songs). Each style presents its own challenges in terms of user experience.

Song queues are best presented with the currently playing song at the top
In Nokia Music, the song queue is treated as a playlist: new songs are added to the bottom of the queue (usually off-screen) and the currently playing song moves down the queue… and off the screen. This makes it difficult to keep track of what’s coming next and what has been added. The Spotify queue is much clearer; the currently playing song is at the top of the list and songs move up the queue.

Users should be warned if an action is likely to end playback unexpectedly
An interesting issue arose with the Last.fm radio stream; when played from within the website, it is easy to navigate away from the page and end the stream.

Never cross the streams!
The Spotify service supports both styles of streaming and we found that the interaction between the two streams can also be confusing. Manually queued songs take priority over upcoming songs in the radio stream even when the user is in the radio environment.

ORGANISING MUSIC

Some of the most severe issues we found were in the way that services allow users to organise their libraries.

A few well implemented sorting and grouping options work best
The Nokia Music library manager offers many options for sorting and grouping items: grouping changes dynamically depending on which sorting options are selected and sorting options vary depending on which view is selected. It all adds up to a confusing and frustrating experience. iTunes’ sorting and grouping options are fairly limited, but much less confusing as a result.

Provide quick access to playlist functions
Playlists are a key feature of organising a digital library. All of the services we looked at support playlists, and we identified some useful conventions. Quick links work well for creating new playlists and should be available throughout the environment. Context menus work well for adding songs to existing playlists. Last.fm has implemented an effective web based context menu that’s worth a look for those looking to implement playlist functionality on a web platform.

SHARING MUSIC

The last activity we looked at was how online music services allow users to share music and musical tastes with each other.

Users should be able to find and share music with people they already know
Last.fm relies heavily on a sense of community amongst its users: each user is part of a Neighbourhood. Where the Last.fm offering really falls down is in helping users find people they know in the real world. Spotify supports this type of sharing much more effectively by allowing any item (e.g., playlist, album, or song) to be dropped as a link into an email. Users can also build up collaborative playlists.

CONCLUSION

This article has presented a brief overview of some of the key findings of our independent research into online music services. Effectively deciding which activities to support and how to support them ensures that a music service meet its users’ requirements. For a copy of the full report, visit www.serco.com/experiencelab.

There are aspects of online music service user experience that we haven’t explored here. Many services for example support direct streaming to mobile devices. Mobile applications that Scrobble songs to Last.fm are common and much has been said about Spotify’s forthcoming Android and iPhone Apps.

To hear more about these and other user experiences, keep an eye on our blog at www.experiencelab.info.”

Tags: experiencelab, iTunes, Last FM, nokia music, spotify

This entry was posted on Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Digital Music Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.