Independent Music App and Community
Role Summary
Role: Chief Product Officer and Development Manager
Platforms: iOS, Android, Responsive Web
Roles: Cross-Platform Product Strategy, Growth Strategy, Development Management, Mobile UI Design, Web UI Design
Project summary
Led digital product strategy and roadmap, as well as the day-to-day management of the development team and product delivery. Hands-on UX and UI design for all phases of app development.
Balanced new feature development with additional back-end admin requirements to ensure the app was future-proofed for growth. Designed intelligent content systems which allowed the community to surface the content that was most useful to them, and discover valuable partnerships. These provided a rich custom framework for grouping content based on the user’s current stage and goal in their music career.
Played a key role in growth strategy, including playbooks for cross-platform user acquisition and retention. Led frequent workshops utilising tools such as the Octalysis gamification framework and Opposing Forces theory, to develop clear annual and quarterly growth targets.
The challenge
To design and develop a multi-faceted social network, from idea through to market launch.
Music unites us. It’s a soul-sustaining universal language we all understand, and a vibrant global industry, teeming with people and connections. For the lucky few on the inside, it’s a small world - but for the millions of independent musicians and industry creatives outside, it’s a very different story. Thanks to streaming, there’s now more music available than ever before, but despite this explosion in content, the record label system has changed very little. For most musicians, it remains a closed shop.
Breaking into the music business has never been easy, even with all the persistence, passion and determination in the world. Record company deals are almost impossible to come by and jobs nearly as scarce. Too often, the inexperienced are exploited and success depends more on luck than talent. The Cosound team believes everyone deserves a chance to develop and showcase their talent.
Cosound has ignited artists careers with their tools, resources and “beyond the label” approach. The only wholly peer-to-peer platform in the independent music market, Cosound allows users to enjoy a safe and collaborative social network, direct marketplace, ongoing artist and career development, and a complete music industry talent and services network.
Building the right product for the problem
From idea through to market launch, I led product strategy and the release roadmap, including:
Market and demographic research
Focus groups with users and industry leaders
A user feedback cycle including direct messages to all new users to discuss their pain points
Career journey mapping for multiple personas at three career stages
Sentiment analysis of user feedback, in-app content, and social listening
Rich community-powered content curation
Boosts are one of the ways that users can make their voice heard in the Cosound community. Users get 7 boosts per day, which can be used to increase the visibility of posts. Like a post? Boost it once. Love it? Boost it up to three times. Boost count, frequency, and quality are used to make sure the best posts get seen by more people, and allow the system to predict high-quality content that the community will love.
Influencer Scores was our answer to the question, “What makes someone a real influencer?” Systems that allow people to buy likes and follows aren’t fair. We wanted to do better. The Cosound Influencer Score is an algorithmic calculation which represents the value that each user adds to the community. Users can raise their score by posting content other people enjoy, engaging in discussions, and being supportive to other members. The score considers seven factors which quantify the positive value that a user provides to the community, without the need to artificially increase empty vanity metrics. This system also helped us identify our most engaged users to offer them a place in our Ambassador program during the earliest phase of app growth.
To help surface the most valuable user-generated content, flexible systems were created around the app’s Discover and Marketplace features. These provided a rich custom framework for grouping content based on the user’s current goal in their music career. These could be easily changed on the fly as we learned more about our users. This system was key to providing targeted guidance and support to users through each new challenge they faced in their career.
Having seen common pitfalls for new products, particularly ones that rely on user-generated content, it was important that we considered admin and moderation tools as priorities, instead of piling them up as tech debt. This allowed us to keep users safe, whilst also building a robust system of marketing and community tools that could be used behind the scenes, without wasting time on unnecessary interfaces. Tools included:
Deeplinks into various entry points in the app for use in external campaigns
Deactivating users and removing content that violates the Code of Conduct
Tagging some admin-created discussions as read-only to encourage responses as new posts instead of comments
Sending push notifications and emails, including segmentation
Manipulating the timeline to surface high-quality content and allowed for early revenue via paid sponsors
Curating content to allow for some educational pieces and opportunities to only be seen by Pro subscribers
Recategorising of content as required to increase discoverability
Management of user permissions
Pro subscription model
In early 2021, the app was pivoted to include a Pro subscription model. The app had always been built with this goal in mind, but the actual course of planning and executing took just over three months. This included user feedback and research to plan which features would provide the most value to the community, multiple rounds of UX design including restructuring of many existing features, development and release of the app, and preparing the community for the change through multiple progressive releases.
A strong focus on ethical design
When it comes to user protection, frankly, existing social media sites are just a mess. From the start, the whole Cosound team agreed that it was vital to give users a safe place to celebrate their wins and be vulnerable when facing challenges. To help with this, a detailed Code of Conduct was created which all users were required to agree to at the time of account creation. Basic moderation alerts were installed from the start, which alerted us of any content that might adversely affect users.
New features were always considered through the lens of, “How could someone abuse this?” both from a social perspective, as well as gaming the system or unfairly penalising users with fewer resources or less privilege, especially in an industry like music where money talks. Data bias is no small problem to solve, and no online system can be truly merit-based, but it is still crucial that we continually consider the impact of the systems we build and aim to do better.
Development management
I led day-to-day management of the offsite development team, contacted through an agency. This required finding the right balance between detailed specifications and agile collaboration, to ensure reliable continued product delivery.
Detailed backlog management and prioritisation, as well as reporting to the larger business team
Adaptation of specs so we could achieve the main goal of features, without being delayed by unnecessary adherence to unimportant details.
Standups, planning meetings, story point sizing, one-to-ones, etc.
Measuring velocity and collaborating on estimates so marketing and growth campaigns could be aligned to expected release dates.
Planning growth in a highly-demanding industry
Over the course of go-to-market planning, I led frequent workshops utilising tools such as the Octalysis gamification framework and Opposing Forces theory, to develop a strong growth strategy. The result of this work was clear annual and quarterly targets, as well as the monthly playbooks required to achieve them. Some growth strategies included:
AMAs (Ask Me Anything) with industry leaders
Re-engagement push notifications to churned users
Welcome DMs to all new members
Welcome messages posted to the public forum to connect new users and give them an opportunity to showcase their goals
Masterclass-style educational content in-app
Regular discussion topic prompts to the community
Cross-platform growth outreach to existing social networks and communities
Feature-based educational content to teach users how to get the most from features designed to help them market themselves and earn
During the primary growth phase, the app was featured on the front and back covers of Music Week magazine, with an additional editorial interview inside.
A vibrant and dedicated community
★★★★☆ 4.7 on the Google Play store
★★★★★ 5.0 on the Apple App Store
Achieved 200% increase in user retention (Winter 2020 vs Spring 2021)
What users have to say
“The team behind this app has a wealth of knowledge and are super helpful and kind. A rare thing these days. This network is everything, and this is a fab app to ask questions and start discussions. Very useful for newbies to the industry like myself.”
“This app has everything you need as a musician or industry professional. Plenty of news, reviews, advice and the chance to check out what like-minded individuals are offering and creating! Anyone in music NEEDS this app!”
“A must-have app if you're looking to connect with others who share the same creative passion.”
“The community Cosound have built is so good to be a part of. It’s such an engaging and fun platform, it’s definitely become one of my favourite apps, I use it every day!”
“The most essential app for building a music industry network. Get ahead of the game and install it now.”