Bandcamp for Diggers: Boosting sales by making music discovery irresistibly fun

Demonstrating creative, customizable search features that transform the music exploration experience, encouraging users to dive deeper into discovering new sounds.

Bandcamp

Bandcamp.com is a beloved platform for independent artists to sell their music directly to fans. Despite its popularity, user experience issues hinder the exploration and discovery of new music. This case study details a three-week redesign project aimed at addressing these issues through improved UX and UI design.

Research approach

The research began with an in-depth analysis of the current Bandcamp website, followed by surveys and interviews with regular users. A provisional persona was created based on initial assumptions to guide the research. The study included:

Surveys: Distributed to users fitting the provisional persona, featuring open-ended questions to gather qualitative data.
Interviews: Conducted with six regular Bandcamp users, ranging from serious enthusiasts to semi-professionals, who spend over €50 monthly on the platform.
Coding and Clustering Quotes: Analysed user feedback to identify common frustrations and challenges.
Prototyping: Conducted a usability test that provided a list of usability issues. A Figma prototype was used to test the new ideas and measure the need of the new functionalities and features with qualitative data.

Business goal

Enhancing efficiency in exploring new music for (semi)professional users to increase the amount of discoveries that fit their taste and requirements and therefore, the willingness to buy more.

Project background

My Role: User research, UX strategy, UI design, and Testing

Objective: Identify product-discovery opportunities and visualise the proposed user interfaces

Deliverables: Hi-fi prototype

Full case study: Bandcamp for music diggers

“This would make such a difference. Could you please submit your ideas to Bandcamp?” — Participant 3

“These features are very creative and useful. I think I would get addicted to this.” — Participant 1

Research

Survey and Interview insights

Current issues

I mapped and coded the feedback that has been collected from the survey and user interviews into an Affinity map to identify frustrations, pain points and needs. The image below show the issues in context.

UX/UI improvements

Enhanced Navigation and Controls:
- Simplify and streamline navigation to make it more intuitive.
- Add hands-on controls (e.g., track skipping) to the media player for better user experience.
Personalised Homepage:
- Redesign the homepage to include personalised content based on user preferences and listening history.
- Implement features like tailored recommendations, recently played tracks, and dynamic album cover tiles.
Advanced Search Functionality:
- Introduce faceted search with the ability to filter by multiple tags and categories.
- Add advanced filter options for more specific searches (e.g., genres, BPM, key).
Improved Wishlist Management:
- Simplify the process of adding tracks to the wishlist, allowing for one-click additions.
- Enhance wishlist management by allowing users to organise wishlists based on BPM, genres, and tags.
Detailed Track Information:
- Include detailed track information such as BPM, key, and genre in the media player and track listings.
Modernised Interface Design:
- Update the visual design to be more modern, minimalist, and engaging.
- Use a playful yet editorial style to create a stronger visual identity.

User flow

Scoping down the project

To narrow the scope of the project and maintain a realistic output within the given timeframe, a user flow has been created. The user flow illustrates how users navigate through the prototype and suggests some of the ideated features.

Design

Exploring layouts and interactions

By sketching low-fidelity screens on my iPad, I quickly explored potential solutions. These sketches were then turned into mid-fidelity screens for testing with users and stakeholders before translating the ideas into final designs.

From low to high fidelity

Visual style

Moodboard

Communicated five brand adjectives: Simple, alternative, editorial, modest and playful

Style Tile

Presented UI elements reflecting the mood board

browser - recommendations [close-up_1].png

browser - definuralgo [dropdownhover].png

browser - definuralgo [collagetiles].png

browser - hero section [mediaplayer].png

A personal landing page with features that inspire users to explore

Based on user search behaviour and patterns, the landing page offers several features designed to encourage users to discover new music.

“My wish list/shopping cart will most likely grow significantly faster. I’m not sure if this will be good for my wallet” — Participant 3

The sticky media player

A media player that sticks with you

To fulfill the desire to listen to music while browsing and exploring layers of content, I designed a media player that stays with the user. As users navigate through the website, the media player remains accessible.

This enhances the listening and browsing experience by offering controls to save albums and tracks individually to their wish list or shopping cart. Additionally, it allows users to explore all relevant releases from the corresponding artist or label.

More controls, less layer diving: Added controls to browse more efficiently

By bringing controls to the forefront, users can easily and quickly browse through releases, artists, and fans, minimizing the need for extensive layer diving.

“It seems all issues I find most frustrating are gone and even better, the whole architecture makes sense now.” — Participant 4

browser - advancedsearch [mediaplayer].png

Search and filtering: Added controls for more specific filtering

The advanced search controls enable users to filter more specifically, encouraging them to search more creatively.

Manipulate the algorithm: A feature to encourage exploring new music

This feature allows users to select releases as inputs to define and manipulate the algorithm for their recommendations. It is a creative solution designed to encourage, inspire, and engage users in exploring music in new ways.

Project roundup

Personal learnings and next steps

Thanks for making it till the end! Perhaps you have a little longer to read how I reflect about my personal learnings and next steps.

Branding and using a mood board

Regarding mood boards, it seems to be more important to understand the vibe and related things you are going to and draw inspiration from, rather than looking for graphical examples that are interesting. For example: Drawing inspiration from the aesthetics of the feeling when we enjoy music that want us to move our bodies. Or for example the aesthetics of an old turntable that gives us the feeling of nostalgia and curiosity.

Using the form of the logo to distinguish sections adds a simple, however visually appealing divider between sections that contributes to the visual identity of Bandcamp.

Aim for higher quality output, rather than quantity

During this project, I learned the importance of identifying and prioritizing issues to focus on the most critical one and maximize its potential. Trying to solve multiple problems at once made it challenging to maintain focus and deliver quality. If I were to redo the project, I would aim for a higher quality output rather than quantity.

As a next step, I would assess which issue causes the most friction and has the greatest impact on the business case. This would allow me to continue the research, conduct a thorough analysis, and create the most effective final design.

Read the Medium article

Image from Travis Yewell found at Unsplash