Artist team access - Spotify for Artists
Unblocking the onboarding bottleneck for existing Spotify profiles for artists and their teams, following the recent launch of the Spotify for Artist platform. Streamlining acquisition and conversion of artists through improvements in verification.
Related news: 🔗Label & Artist teams on Spotify for Artists / 🔗Access via Distributors
My role
Product Designer
Time
June 2017 – February 2018
My focus
Lead the design and research for improving artist and team onboarding to the newly released Spotify for Artist platform.
Context
On April 21 2017, Spotify Fan Insights beta publicly launched as Spotify for Artists.
Slumped growth in target audience with low overall engagement with platform, stemmed from a lack of ability to properly gain access to the platform and low engagement with existing userbase.
33% of the team’s target top 75k artists had ever signed up for the platform. Showing little growth in the higher tiered/profile artist group comprising the majority of streams.
60% of users from that 33% are actively using the platform each month.
Manual processing of for onboarding
Onboarding is an extremely manual process that requires dedicated Customer Service agents in order to verify access for users to artist profiles, due to the highly sensitive nature of the data. Leading to12,000 – 20,000 cases and $80,000 in support overhead per week.
Slow response times
An artist will usually hear back within a week or never at all. Also we had not built any way of communicating application status at the time.1 week average response time
Low approval/access rate
Out of the submissions received, only 32% are successfully approved. Caused by a number of issues: particularly due to fans applying to the product and not enough data on user applications.
An offsite somewhere in Flatiron
Team brainstorm
Customer service, user research, data science, & product met to understand existing problems for user teams and different methods we could implement to solve our top of funnel conversion issue.
Key focus areas
1) Alternative verification
Partnering with distributors to grant users instant access to artists accounts at scale
2) Higher quality data & UX improvements
Addressing usability, information architecture, and speed of experience. Changing the qualifications and number of submissions per user.
1) Alternative verification
1A. Invite team member
We had built a tool in march that allows users to invite additional members to manage an account. If a top 10% artist has already been verified, we require a user to use the “Add Team” tool and self-serve.
1B. Instant Access via distributor
Since distributors map works to artists accounts by nature, partnering with distributors to grant users instant access to artists accounts at scale.
2) Higher quality data & UX improvements
2A) Limit submission number
On average teams only are approved for one artist at a time. By limiting the artist volume per submission, users are more intentional about request individual accounts.
2B) Clarify intended user & SSO
Provide more context and clarity around who the product is intended for (Artists and managers) . Make what logging onto the Spotify SSO means for this sign up experience.
2C) Require more identity information
By requiring a minimum of some form of links or connecting social media accounts, we allow CS to more easily map artists to real user accounts
User research
3 Artists in top 75k
We brought in emerging artists who haven’t yet been verified on Spotify for Artists to understand their expectations and understanding of our access prototype.
Prototype:
Insights / Feedback
Spotify SSO? Where’s my artist profile?
It’s still not clear why they’re signing onto Spotify immediately or why. Also, artists wanted to quickly chose their artist profile – finding their correct profile was the most important part.
Opportunity for delight
Artists are excited to learn about Spotify for Artists and what they can do with the tool but also are waiting to get accepted. Participants found singing up to be an exciting moment – getting access to a secret club.
Unlikely to revisit
Like many onboarding experiences, you expect to get an email when you’re in, not to search for answers. It’s an uncommon expectation to need to check an application status, you’re expected to be pulled into the product.
Final build prototype: 🔗https://framer.cloud/LQYwh/
Result
54% of all requests are being automated
By leveraging alternative access methods with guaranteed success, customer service has more time to work through manual request of the remain submissions
Impact
52% higher quality requests
By enforcing more information upfront, CS teams have better quality data to vet users and verify them.
17% increase in approval
By changing the required information to submit and removing duplicate/fan applications the request flow is seeing greater success percentages from 30% to 47%
Less than 24 hour wait times
We improved the 1 week or longer average wait time to merely 24 hours. We also finally created a rejection email.