Spotify For Artist Roster
Multi-artist management tooling for labels working within Spotify for Artists.
Role
I was the lead designer (and only designer) working with a Sr. PM, data scientist, UX writer, and engineering team.
We will get to the fact that every artist' homepage looks identical in another project in this portfolio 😉
Problem
For labels overseeing multiple artists, staying on top of all the outstanding tasks across their roster was an immense undertaking. In Spotify for Artists, customers would have to click into each artist, and drill several layers deep to understand what tasks they had to do.
Furthermore, getting a global sense of your catalogue performance, was none-existent. So if I manage 150 artists, they would have to drill into each of their individual analytics pages to see how they are performing.
Consequently, customers resorted to creating custom Excel spreadsheets, Kanban boards, and to-do lists to efficiently manage tasks within Spotify for Artists. This workaround was necessitated by the platform's limitations in providing a seamless and consolidated task management solution.
Where I took over
The multi-artist feature on Spotify for Artists was extremely basic. All it included was an unsearchable list of artists, their next release, and the ability to pitch a song to Spotify editorial playlists. No understanding of performance, no way of taking additional actions, and no way to easily find artists. Some of these labels have quite literally thousands of artists, so this page was effectively useless which was reflected in the engagement data at the time. Also when we conducted qualitative testing, multiple customers didn’t even know this page existed.
“We [managers] love data, but currently there is no great way of seeing it beyond the artist level...I work with 45 artists...its a chore...”
Gaining understanding
Embarking on this project without an existing multi-artist experience in Spotify for Artists, our initial step involved engaging with customers who manage multiple artists. This ranged from individuals at small labels overseeing about 10 artists to those at major labels with over 10,000 artists—although they didn't directly manage all of them, they still sought a certain level of engagement and visibility.
Agnostic to size, there was commonality in desired features. Multi-artist customers, had a desire to:
Have an easy way to find any artist on their team regardless of size
Wanted to see basic performance metrics
Have a way to indicate which artists were important to them
Wanted a way to see which opportunities were available for them to take
And artists on a major label that owned other labels also wanted:
An easy way to drill into a specific label (ex. as a worker at UMG I only want to see the performance of artists belonging to Republic Records)
A way to filter to a specific opportunity — since with larger companies typically people go from more generalists doing tasks across the board for their small catalogue of artists, to doing a few specific tasks for many artists.
New Roster
Every feature implemented in the new version of roster comes from obsessively understanding multi-artist customer’s workflow.
Search. Groundbreaking.
Streams, listeners, followers, saves, playlist adds data column with the ability to change the hero metric for the stat customer wants to focus on.
Accompanying % change column to understand change of metrics over a specific timeframe.
Timeframe filter
The ability to ★ favorite up to 100 artists for a quick view into the artists you care the most about
Opportunities action menu shows customers available actions an artist can take and which actions have already been completed
Sort by opportiunities (ex. show me only artists that still haven’t set up their merch store)
Filter by teams (ex. I work at UMG, a major label, but I just want to see artists that are a part of Republic Records)
Roster on Mobile
Tables on mobile can be a bit tricky when trying to fit a ton of information on such a small screen. However, we know that a lot of customers that work with artists are commonly on the go, so this was a critical decision that I advocated for. Understanding what features should be accentuated on mobile to optimize for usability and efficiency was key. Hearing from label customers and managers was pivotal in understanding what their workflows looked like when on tour or traveling with artists.
The mobile experience gives prominence to the search and favorites filter so even customers that have rosters of >10,000 (and yes that is a use case among major labels) can quickly find and take action on the artists they care about.
Results
The implementation of Roster was one of the most successful launches in Spotify for Artists.
The % of users clicking opportunities on roster increased 95% (yes you read that correctly) 🤯
Campaign creation had a NET increase of 24% (attributable clickthrough from the Roster surface) 🤯
Qualitative surveys also show our multi-artist customers are loving this tool to accomplish their workflows.
Next steps
With Roster being such a widespread success on the platform, we will be running an experiment for customers that manage 10 or more artists for the roster becomes their new landing page. As we spoke to customers one on one, it became clear that this was something really valuable and an obvious place for customers who juggle managing several artists to land.
.;’