Designing enhancements to Apple Music Classical
A couple of potential solutions to encourage users to explore other recordings for music they already love
In my last post, linked below, I introduced Apple Music Classical; a streaming app designed specifically for classical music.
I concluded that while the app had the right data model for this genre at its foundation, it did not leverage this model enough to enhance the music discovery experience.
So, for this post I decided to explore what this enhanced experience could look like. Drawing on my own experience, I decided to start at one of the most commonly used parts of the app; the album screen.
A reminder on how the app works
Before arriving at a problem statement, here’s a reminder of the relationship between ‘Albums’, ‘Recordings’, and ‘Works’ in Apple Music Classical, using a couple of albums of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 as an example: an ‘Album’ contains a ‘Recording’ of a ‘Work’. ‘Recordings’ can only belong to one ‘Album’, but different ‘Recordings’ can be of the same ‘Work’. I’ll use these terms in lowercase and without the quote marks from now on. You can’t go more granular than works because different albums break up a single work into a varying number of tracks.
The problem statement
The London Symphony Orchestra’s 2006 album of Beethoven’s 9 symphonies, Leonore Overture, and Triple Concerto was a great example to build from because I had listened to this album over and over again since first buying it 12 years ago.
While each of the 11 works in this album was separated by a heading that linked to its own page from which I could choose from a number of different recordings, there was little encouragement in the app to do so. At the same time, the album page had a single ‘Play’ call-to-action button which discouraged further exploration once I landed on that album.
With this in mind, the problem I chose to solve was: How might the album screen encourage users to explore other recordings of works they already love?
Two suggested design changes
I produced high-fidelity mock-ups for a couple of ‘nudges’ intended to solve the problem statement. I used this Beethoven album as an example and ensured my designs adhered to the app’s existing style, including fonts and colours.
Let’s take each nudge in turn:
Nudge 1: addition of ‘Explore Works’ call-to-action button
The first nudge I added was for users who already had an idea of the album they wanted to play, but were open to exploring other recordings for the works in that album.
I added a second call-to-action button alongside the ‘Play’ button labelled ‘Explore Works’, to nudge the user to consider trying another recording for these works.
Tapping this new button took the user to a brand new ‘Works in this album’ page that listed all the hyperlinked works, each followed by an ‘Alternative Recording’ for the user to play with one tap.
Nudge 2: addition of ‘Alternative Recording’ under each work’s heading
The second nudge I added was for users who already knew which work they wanted to play and which album to find it under, but again were open to exploring other recordings for the works in that album.
I added a suggested ‘Alternative Recording’ between each work’s heading and the music tracks within the album page. This was more visually appealing and prominent than the existing design, and it required the user to take fewer steps.
A concern was that this could annoy users by effectively displaying ‘adverts’ next to the tracks the user was interested in. One solution was to implement a toggle switch in settings to ‘Disable suggestions in albums’.
In conclusion
My starting point for these design changes was what I personally would find useful as an Apple Music Classical user. These would need to be backed up by user research and business objectives before seeing the light of day.
But I hope this design exploration shows how the data model underpinning the app can be leveraged to help users branch out from their comfort zone. Using the musical work as a key enables users to find the exact piece they’re looking for across hundreds of albums. There is a lot of potential to bring this kind of unique experience to life on Apple’s platform.
Please let me know what you think! If you’re an email subscriber, you can simply hit ‘reply’ in your email client.
Have a nice week ☀️