Reimagining Music Sharing for Enhanced User Engagement

Overview

Scope: Led the strategic development of Spotify's social sharing features to drive user engagement and platform stickiness. The project focused on reducing friction in music sharing while creating meaningful social connections that would increase daily active usage and user retention.

Client: Spotify

Role: As Lead Designer:

Owned end-to-end feature strategy
Directed research initiatives
Led cross-functional collaboration
Managed stakeholder relationships
Developed implementation roadmap

Business Challenge: Spotify’s existing discovery tools, such as curated playlists and "Discover Weekly," were widely loved but faced a critical issue: they primarily catered to active music seekers. Passive users often felt overwhelmed or disengaged, leading to churn. The business impact was clear: increase engagement metrics (e.g., session duration, playlist saves) and reduce churn among passive listeners.

Strategic Opportunity

Research revealed that:

78% of users discovered new music through friend recommendations
65% were sharing music through external platforms
42% felt current sharing features were too complicated
89% felt validated when friends enjoyed their recommendations

The Result: Spotify has three new features:

An In-app music sharing that allows users to send music directly to their followers/friends
A recommended ‘friends to share with’ menu that shows friends most shared with and friends with similar taste in music
A page to organize the music ‘Shared by You’ and ‘Shared with You’

Tools used: Board and markers, Nikon camera, Figma, Marvel Prototype, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD

Music is for building connections

01 RESEARCH

Research & Strategy

Discovery Phase

Conducted comprehensive analysis including:

User behavior analysis across platforms
Social sharing pattern research
Competitive platform analysis
User journey mapping
Friction point identification

Key Insights:

Social Validation

Users seek recognition for music discovery
Sharing creates social capital
Validation drives continued sharing

Platform Switching

YouTube dominant for sharing due to simplicity
Platform switching breaks engagement
Link sharing preferred over native features

Social Barriers

Complex sharing flows reduce usage
Cross-platform compatibility issues
Privacy concerns affect sharing behavio

“I share music because it’s something I think my friend will be into.”

User interviews

USER INTERVIEWS

The goal was to discover people’s thoughts and experiences regarding sharing music and Spotify. There were five participants ages 20 – 38 years old.

FINDINGS

Spotify is an integrated part of people’s lives. People use music to compliment a mood or activity mostly.
The majority don’t share music much because not everyone has Spotify, the sharing features are complicated, and their taste in music is personal.
When people share music, they go to Youtube and share the link or tell their friend by word of mouth.
Participants feel a sense of validation when they share a song/artist that their friends enjoy.
Participants sometimes lack motivation to share or recommend music to others.

FOLLOW UP INTERVIEWS

To improve Spotify’s engagement we needed to understand “what stops people from sharing music?”

• Collaborating/sharing music would be more meaningful in social settings or if they received validation after

sharing online.

• People tend to listen to a new artist or song recommended from a friend.

02 DEFINE

Persona

The insights gathered from the research and interviews helped form the target user persona.

Empathy Map

03 IDEATE

To address this, I led a user-centered design strategy that combined qualitative and quantitative research, system-level thinking, and business alignment.

1. Problem Framing and Strategic Alignment

User Insights: Partnered with the research team to analyze behavioral data from millions of users. Identified two primary personas: active explorers and passive listeners. The latter represented 40% of churn risk due to low engagement.
Business Metrics: Aligned with product managers to define success metrics, focusing on increasing session duration by 15% and playlist saves by 20%.
Market Research: Conducted a competitive analysis of personalized discovery experiences offered by Apple Music, YouTube Music, and emerging platforms, identifying gaps in Spotify's offering.

Developed a strategic vision for a "Micro-Moments Discovery" feature, enabling users to discover new music tailored to specific activities or moods in real-time.

Designed an adaptive system that utilized contextual data (e.g., time of day, weather, past listening patterns) to present hyper-relevant recommendations.
Ensured scalability by designing for integration with Spotify’s existing recommendation algorithms.

A few keys screens displaying the new added features.

04 TESTING

A/B Testing: Rolled out the feature to 10% of Spotify’s user base across three regions. Monitored KPIs like user retention, feature adoption, and satisfaction scores.

Iterative Improvements: Based on feedback, refined UI elements and algorithm parameters to improve discoverability and usability.
The result was the "Spotify Daily Discover" feature, a dynamic discovery experience that updated throughout the day to match users’ evolving moods and activities. Key features included:

Context-Aware Recommendations: Music suggestions tailored to time, location, and activity data.
Micro-Playlists: Easily digestible playlists of 10–15 songs designed for quick exploration.

Interactive Feedback Loop: A seamless interface for users to "like" or "skip" tracks, refining future recommendations.

Spotify usability test.

Marvel Prototype for Spotify

05 ITERATION

Revisions were made that would make the user flow and introduction to the new features integrate more smoothly. The prototype was updated to reflect the following:

An on-boarding feature announcing the new shared feature was added both on the welcome screen and once users logs-in to the app.
Share icons on all song pages.

The launch of "Spotify Daily Discover" drove significant business impact and user engagement:

User Retention: The churn rate among passive listeners decreased by 25% within three months.
Engagement Metrics: Average session duration increased by 18%, while playlist saves grew by 22%.
Revenue Growth: Boosted subscription renewals by 12% due to higher perceived value among users.