jeezramirez:Ways to Improve Songkick [Part 1 of 2] Let me first begin by saying that I LOVE Songki

jeezramirez: Ways to Improve Songkick [Part 1 of 2] Let me first begin by saying that I LOVE Songkick.  For those of you unfamiliar, Songkick is an iPhone app that allows you to organize and track your favorite bands, track concerts and live shows.  The app launched ~2 months ago and reached 100,000 downloads in two weeks!  Not too shabby, eh?? I’m a big fan of the app and appreciate the attention to detail that was paid to the user experience and feature set.  By that I mean it’s clear that the Songkick team focused on delivering a clean and uncluttered experience by only including necessary features — ones that power the experience, but are also inconspicuous.  A great example of this a feature that scans your music library and creates a personalized calendar based on your artists and your location.  So if you own a Radiohead album, for example, Songkick sees this and alerts you when Radiohead is coming to your town.  This, in fact, all happens magically in the background.  As Steve Jobs would say, “it just works.” This is never as easy as it sounds, of course.  Often, companies cram on and tout features like they’re the end-all, be-all.  That’s a mistake if the features detract from the app’s intended purpose or confuse the user.  Songkick’s purpose is clear:  track your favorite artists and discover shows around you.  The app’s features enable this experience, without getting in the way.  So getting back to the title of the blog post, how do you improve Songkick?  Well, I’m glad you asked. 1. Adding a Music Player Songkick is great for tracking your favorite bands and artists.  But when it comes to discovering new live shows and artists around you, the app is missing a critical piece: a music player.  Currently, if I want to discover shows around me, I select the “Location” tab and Songkick displays all the bands that are playing in my area.  That’s great, but here lies the problem.  Music fans don’t go see bands they have never listened to.  It’s too risky — what if the band sucks?  Fans mitigate these risks by looking up the band on MySpace, YouTube or elsewhere and seeing if the band is worth checking out.  I do this several times a week and it’s a slow, cumbersome and less than ideal process.  You know what would solve this?  [Angels singing] Yup, a music player! Yes, a music player would do wonders for live music discovery and engagement.  Imagine you fire up SongKick and start scrolling through nearby shows.  You see that a band you don’t recognize, but is playing at one of your favorite, local venues.  “I wonder if they are any good”, you ask yourself.  Well, guess what?  Now you can find out by listening to one of their tracks directly from the app.  All on Songkick, in one single frictionless experience. Here’s an example of what this experience may look like: The biggest challenge, of course, is getting music onto the Songkick platform.  For this, Songkick can take one of two approaches. The first option is to partner with an open platform who has already done most of the legwork, such as a SoundCloud or Last.fm.  Both these platforms have deep catalogs of artist-uploaded music content that can be leveraged via their APIs.  The advantages of this approach are speed and ease.  The disadvantages are lack of full control over content and having to depend on another platform.  Depending on another platform is particularly risky — just ask Twitter or Apple developers or developers that used to rely on Imeem. The second approach is to build a framework from scratch — a framework that would allow bands and artists to upload their own content.  This strategy would give Songkick more control over the entire experience, but obviously, would be more difficult to build and would take more time.  One challenge would be convincing bands to upload their music.  Fortunately, Songkick already provides a meaningful value proposition to bands, especially small, unsigned bands — that is that it’s a really effective way to  attract new fans.  After all, music fans are far more likely to become fans of a band after a live show than by listening to one of their songs online.  And with more music fans downloading the Songkick app every day, looking to find live shows, bands will soon realize just how powerful the platform is for driving fans to their shows.  And they will be incentivized to strengthen this process by posting their music on the platform.  That is, if Songkick enables it.  Ultimately, injecting music into the Songkick discovery experience is a win-win for music fans AND music artists.  A better experience means more people going to shows.  And isn’t that what it’s all about — getting more butts to concerts and live shows.  I for one, welcome it.  Not only for the reasons above, but also because I’m selfish and would love the experience of scrolling through live shows, listening to new artists, and using the app to decide which show to attend on a Friday or Saturday night.  Sort of like watching previews before deciding on a movie.  Besides, more people at shows means better crowdsurfing. ;) -- source link

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