Behind the scenes: UI / UX improvements in our Music Library
I am sharing some of the behind the scenes work on various projects I am involved with.
In this post I will be sharing some UX / UI improvements to our music library themusicase.com. We are always improving some features related to the overall experience of the user but this time we implemented some major changes in the music search and navigation of the website.
First of all, let me share what led us in this direction. And here is one thing: a huge number of new music tracks uploaded by our composers. Actually, this one thing is what always drove changes in that project. The need to organize all this music in categories, moods, styles, keywords so that clients can easily find the right track for their media projects.
Many times we had the feeling that we found the perfect way to diplay and sort music. But as the library grew in numbers we kept seeing that we needed to keep adding new features and doing minor tweaks on the UX. The system worked well with 20,000 tracks in the library but not so much with 50,000 tracks. The new system worked well with 50,000 but not with 80,000 tracks. Right now the library is at 125,000 tracks so once again it’s time for a change.
Before getting into actions we took and further details let me share some facts about how we have implemented the music upload system. When a new composer wants to join our library and make music available for licensing through the platform, they submit their links for audition so our team can check the quality of music and also the music styles. If a composer is accepted they receive a link to create the composer account and automatically gain access to the composer dashboard where they can start uploading music.
For each track uploaded, composers connect the track to a specific music Mood and also “tag” each track with several keywords. Also note that from the moment a new composer gains access to the panel, they can upload an unlimited number of tracks without further review (however some tracks can be disabled by curators after upload).
The description of the above system is crucial for the need of continuous UX changes as we are not in total control of the amount of new music uploaded. There are days where new and existing composers may upload 50 tracks in total and other days where the new number of new tracks uploaded may reach 500 or way more.
Also note that as the number of tracks increases, the allocation of sales between composers also changes as the ratio of library participation by each composer gets smaller and this might affect sales.
Actions we took with 125,000 tracks
Curated Playlists
As the number of music choices grows, we felt that we needed to add a new section on the website. A section with preselected tracks by our curators organized in Playlists of 15 tracks each. Clients who just want an easy background track for their YouTube intro could quickly find it among the 15 tracks shown in the curated background music playlist without even visiting the whole 125,000 library section.
Those playlists are curated by our team and are updated on a weekly basis.
New Search function on Library pages
In the section of library pages we added a new search feature: Narrow down existing search results.
The ability to filter down 125,000 tracks in a way that the user finds the one track that best suits their advert or film they are working on was somehow missing. Even if the music was placed in the right Style or Mood by the composer, the client still had to listen to 5,000 tracks categorized as “epic” music.
We needed to find a way to easily narrow down from 5,000 epic tracks to the 10 best epic tracks for the specific needs of each user.
On this note we implemented a simple “filter down” system — which means “search inside existing results”.
If a user clicks on let’s say the “epic” music genre they get a new search bar so they can search inside “epic music”. For example, if they are looking for something more “patriotic”, by using the new search bar they get tracks tagged as “patriotic” within the “Epic” style. With these results they can enter a new keyword and filter down even more.
A tweak on this feature was that users who had used, say, 4 keywords to filter down music results could delete any of the 4 keywords so that the search delivers results having the 3 remaining keywords.
User flow based on the above search feature:
- User enters Epic genre: 4400 results
- User filters down using the keyword “ battle” : 1100 results (Epic > Battle)
- User filters down using the extra keyword “ timpani” : 17 results (Epic > Battle > Timpani) — listen here to the filtered results
- User deletes keyword “battle” : 90 results (Epic > Timpani)
I will keep posting on improvements and tweaks on various projects I am involved with. Feel free to contact me through Linkedin.
Yannis Kirimkiridis — founder Themusicase.com
