This opportunity arose early on in our guerilla research stages, when we heard many people repeatedly mention a lack of a sense of ownership. This happened when when people transitioned from physical mediums such as tapes, vinyls, and CDs to music streaming platforms. We knew that being able to re-capture that sense of music ownership would be valuable for people.
However, as our team moved into our research into IRL music-listening, social listening, and contextual listening with our diary studies and storyboarding, this opportunity was left on the backburner. It wasn't until we moved into our insight mapping stages where we revisited this opportunity space.
We found that ownership is strongly connected to peoples' sense of identity, and that this is a valuable area to dig further into.
Based on our guerilla research, affinity mapping, and insight mapping activities, we saw that a lack of music ownership was a commonly referenced problem in music streaming. We drew a couple key insights from our conversations with music listeners.
There is a strong relationship between music listeners and their sense of ownership of music, and we knew that being able to re-capture this in a streaming platform would be valuable.
People feel a strong sense of connection to their barber — even though they can get a similar service elsewhere — because they've built a strong personal connection with them. This is analogous to streaming services, where people who have built up a history and ownership are more likely to stick around.
Based on our background research and insights, we dug into this opportunity space further through prototyping.
The goal of the My Music Space prototype is to create a sense of ownership by allowing people to customize their music space.
One major insight we gained from this is that ownership implies a desire for possession — or on a broader scale, a desire for connection.
By allowing people to express some personal aspect of their identity, they feel more connected to their music and the platform.
The Trading Cards prototype reimagines what ownership looks like in a music streaming world — if music ownership is no longer possible, is algorithm ownership a suitable substitute?
Users can customize their algorithm "trading cards" by editing artists, mood, genre, and risk, and plug in these cards to their music recommendation algorithm.
People implicitly understood what algorithm ownership meant, and used this prototype as a tool for music discovery.
The Time Machine prototype allows people to revisit and reaffirm their past identities, by revisiting "music eras" of their life as a means of nostalgic rediscovery.
People who have a long history of listening on a streaming platform can revisit that history to reconnect with and affirm their identity.
Based on our prototyping and our cumulative research, we've identified some key areas within this opportunity space we're excited to dig further into in the future.
We found that letting people express their identity and share it with others gives them a strong sense of ownership
Letting people re-experience their history on the platform helps people affirm their identity, and connects them with the patlform itself.
Since we found such a strong connection between identity and ownership, we're excited to dig further into ways to let people explore their identity through music.
Our prototyping led to a watershed moment in which we learned that ownership is closely connected with identity and a desire for connection based on that identity. We realized that people craved ownership not just for ownership’s sake, but as a way of expressing their identity as well as connecting with others and their own past. Our team is excited to explore this opportunity as we move into the summer.