Design Rant time! Today: audio streaming services. Why are they all the same old boring things and stuck in the same old metaphors of "playlists" and "radio"? Virtual ports of old music-library managers. Lots of improvements to be made—in particular, tags! #ThingsIWantToExist
Design rant: tags instead of playlists in music streaming
25 tweets · June 2020 · 326 likes · 20 retweets · read on Twitter
Here's my initial list of obvious things to add/improv: - sharing & collaboration features - listening history - search - discovery - zoom in / zoom out (preference exploration) - custom track metadata - artist monetization (will elaborate on each of these later in the thread)
Here's the killer feature tho: TAGS. There are at least 2 types of playlists: 1⃣ songs in a specific order for a specific context (eg "Halloween Party 2009" or "Focus Day Playlist") 2⃣ collection of related songs, grouped together by mood, theme, etc (eg "Chill" or "Uplifting")
The 2nd type shouldn't be a "playlist" AT ALL, but should be a TAG that can be applied to a song or a group of songs. This would allow many powerful new playflows (like "workflows", get it 😉) For instance: intersections, ie "play all songs tagged both #electronica & #sad"
Those intersections could be done based on exclusively songs you've directly tagged yourself, or could use some combo of machine learning (on lyrics & metadata, as well as the audio itself) and other-users-using-same-tags to generate larger source song sets to work with
Of course, in addition to intersections, you could also have unions: "play all songs tagged #funk or #horns or #electrofunk" You can kinda do this manually atm by like, shuffling playlists together, but it's awkward. Or subtraction: "#rock − #christian" if atheist friend over
Tags plus audio analysis would also allow algos to generate playlists that gradually transition from one tag to another, to sculpt mood ☕️ morning: café jazz→electrofunk 🕺 dancing: "5 Rhythms" [Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, Stillness] 😴 bedtime: chillstep→ambient
If you allowed tags to specific whether they were about the lyrics or the genre, you could use ML on the lyrics too and have even more precise radios: - songs about a particular topic - songs that are particularly full of wordplay - could combine w genre for eg "chill love songs"
I seriously don't know why companies like Google Play Music, Deezer, Spotify, etc, aren't doing this. It would increase lock-in and create more value in the whole ecosystem because other users' tags add meaning. ALSO, it gets your customers to tag your ML data for free!
speaking of which, switch from just 👍/👎 to also have option "this track is fine but doesn't belong on this radio-station/auto-tag, in my opinion" I bet there are people who would be excited to be some of the first to listen to new untagged music and ensure it gets some tags.
(Though while I'm talking about 👍/👎, I really wish I could tell Google Play Music to NEVER play a song for me. I love @BT's ESCM album except the track Solar Plexus, which I have to remove/skip manually ever time I put the album on 🤦♀️…awful disempowered feeling.)
Time to elaborate on some of the things I described in the second tweet. I think why these "obvious things" haven't happened yet, is that the creators of these *apps* haven't escaped the old metaphors of "music library" & "radio", even tho new bizmodel.
In particular, the apps haven't really been redesigned to acknowledge the reality that they're a gateway into 40 million songs that you have access to on-demand: Playlists are for managing finite number of owned mp3s Radios = "I want <genre> music; don't bother me w details"
Obvs internet means: better sharing & collaboration features Little innovation on this since I first tried Rdio party playlists in 2012, & GPlayMusic is still worse than that. Ideas: - built in "name that song" - user-contests for recommendations - one curator, many suggesters
Listening History. Maybe other apps do better than GPlay here. But this could be really powerful, with audio & graph search features like "I heard it last week… at least 5 mins long, and had a kind of slow opening, and it was just before some Coldplay track"
Speaking of Search, why the FUCK can't I create playlists filtered by bpm? (ie beats-per-minute, aka tempo) It's super easy to calculate bpm of a song (for most genres) and this would be awesome for making running playlists or restricting chill playlists from getting too upbeat.
Or either in the form of search or as a radio filter, being able to force instrumental tracks only, or only ones with vocals, or no drums at all, or minimal heavy-bass (I mean, having built in equalizers would help with that, but still) or to search/filter by year/month released
Speaking of year/month released, better Discovery. GPM nuked theirs last year (I think tryna push ppl to YT Music) but it was also only like a 3/10 before, by my reckoning. Soundcloud is somehow like a 7 or 8/10. 10/10 would have a mix of precise tuning & feedback + magic
I think these services maybe focus on being able to provide you with an endless stream of music that you'll find "decent"—which is an amazing resource and not to be knocked, but! ADDITIONALLY we need modes where half are total meh and 5% are new fav songs/artists 🤩
Relatedly, the ability while listening to a radio or other discovery source, to say "this song is awesome, can you try more of this album/artist on me and see if I like it?" and it would sort of organically do that (in the current radio & later) and find out if you're into it
And, corollarily, to say "I really don't like this" and have it sort of zoom out and play less of that artist. Ideally even take direct feedback like "dumb lyrics" or "too harsh noises" or "too repetitive". (& this could be tagged with "never" vs "not in the mood atm")
Finally, track Metadata. Stick text on songs, both for later reference & search, and for social reasons. Could even do playful things like "show this comment to any friend who listens to this track 10+ times" and there'd be an "omg you love this too!" moment
Wait, one more: artist monetization! People want to support their fav artists, and let's face it: streaming services are shit for this. But they could help, without hurting their own bottom lines, by supporting ticket & merch sales, or… integrating artist patreon perks?
Are all of these good ideas? Maybe not. It would certainly be a lot 😂 But it's weird how few new ideas (good OR bad) we've seen from these companies offering music streaming services.
If you enjoyed this design thread, you may like my many other threads of #ThingsIWantToExist! Topics include e-readers, conversation-apps, podcast apps, crowdfunding, &+