Beats Music

2011
Full service design
My role: UX Director

The brief

Develop a new music streaming service to compete and win against Spotify and iTunes.

The outcome

Working with data scientists, we combined the power of curation and technology to bring humanity and joy back to music discovery. The end result was a visceral experience and encouraged users to dive deeper into musical discovery.

The result

Beats Music was the global number one music app in both Android and Apple app stores. It won many major awards including Cannes Lions, Clios, & D&ADs. Its success caught the eye of Apple CEO Tim Cook who bought Beats Music as part of a $3bln deal. Beats Music evolved into Apple Music. 

Insights

• Current offerings mistake discovery for curation and offer only safe bets.
  A more human, courageous solution is needed.
  
  
• The passion of the music and artists needs to be respected and celebrated.
  
  
• The interface needs to represent the brand and embody its characteristics. It needs to engage and delight the user.

Love and hate. Many services consider actions like hate as off brand, but for Beats Music we embraced it. When it comes to music, the genres or artists you hate end up telling a lot more than the ones you like. We learn that likes may follow a trend, but hating can get very personal.

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