Fan Bundles: Helping Musicians make a Living
OVERVIEW
One of Amazon Music’s goals for 2023 is to help support Artists by providing them with different monetization strategies. In response, the Product Design Team at Amazon Music conducted a Design Sprint to generate ideas around the topic of Artist Monetization. “Next generation box sets”, known as Fan Bundles, gained the highest confidence with regards to addressing customer needs.
BACKGROUND
Team: Amazon Music for Artists
Timeline: May 2023 - August 2023
Goal: Define what a “next generation box set”, aka fan bundles is
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FINAL SCREENS
Finding a Bundle
Bundle Detail Page
Creating a Bundle Flow
USER PROBLEMS
Artists aren’t able to earn a living solely based off streaming revenue
Fans feel like the Artist doesn’t engage with their community enough
I attacked the problem of Artist monetization from both sides of the customer experience: Artist and Fan. Balancing the needs of both customers was certainly a challenge throughout the entire summer. However, it was clear that both fans and artists wanted connection with each other (in one way or another).
OUR TARGET CUSTOMER
Super fan who has invested both time and money into their favorite Artist(s)
Just like how dedicated fans form the bedrock of an artist's financial stability by making consistent purchases, our "super fans" serve as the core customers who actively seek more engagement and exclusive content. Centering the feature of “fan bundles” around super fan’s needs benefits both of our customers.
HOW MIGHT WE...
use product bundles as a way to provide Artists with financial stability and a growing fan community?
use product bundles as a way to strengthen Fan’s relationships with their favorite artists?
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
In order to better understand the problem space, I looked to other companies, creating my own definition while gathering various advantages and disadvantages.
Analyzed 39+ companies across 11 different industries to gain a better understanding of what “product bundling” means
Across multiple industries and companies, a common definition emerged product bundle: curated collection of complementary products or services for sale as one product or service package
Other high level insights:
Marketing strategy is based upon the perceived price benefit that a customer gains because they are purchasing a single package
Bundles are often associated with scarcity and ephemerality to increase hype and limitedness surrounding these items
Not limited to groups of physical products, can bundle digital services or experiences to enhance overall product
GENERATIVE AND EVALUATIVE USER RESEARCH
After synthesizing insights from the Competitive Audit and Analysis, I started to validate my assumptions by talking with my customers.
Conducted a survey and card sort to better understand mental models and preferences of our customers surrounding product bundles
CUSTOMER ARCHETYPES
Based on behaviors observed during card sort, I created super fan archetypes that highlights nuances between different types of fans
While we had clearly outlined our target customer as “super fans”, I saw behaviors and observation patterns emerge as I parsed research results. Personifying these differences helped us address super fans individual needs better with curated bundles for these specific archetypes.
PRODUCT BUNDLE RECOMMENDATIONS
Synthesizing both the competitive analysis and research insights, I created 4 different fan bundle recommendations that target at least one type of super fan
All of the recommended bundles contain physical merch, as from the research, this was the most highly request item from both Artists and Fans. Additionally, all of the items in the recommended bundles received over 50% agreement from our customers. Using data to drive the creation of these fan bundles allowed me to present my findings with the highest confidence to relevant stakeholders and other designers.
FINAL PROTOTYPES
After constructing the product bundles, the challenge now became:
Artist's Perspective
How do we introduce this feature without increasing their workload?
Fan's Perspective
How do we visually represent these bundles to purchasing customers?
Visualizing a holistic future of Fan Bundles required a dive deep into 3 separate touch points: Amazon Music mobile app, Amazon Retail, and the Amazon Music for Artists desktop app
Starting with the Artist, let's go back to their main pain point: Inability to earn a living as a musician solely based on streaming
The proposed solution addresses this need for financial stability, while taking into account the limited bandwidth of these musicians in 4 different ways:
Leverages Amazon's Merch On Demand for full scale production and distribution
Curated bundle recommendations based on user research
Suggested but customizable price, quantity, and sell date
Seamless integration of promotional tools to reach all fans
Moving onto the other key player, fans felt that Artists don't engage enough
When creating the end to end experience I investigated multiple ways for fans to find this new feature, as well adding in time bits of delight where fans could engage with their favorite artists
Discovering bundles through...
Search
Artist's Detail Page
Push Notifications
Now Playing X-Ray
But it doesn't stop there, you can also explore these bundles on the Amazon retail app
Home
Search
Artist's Merch Store
Inspire
And lastly, thinking about the Bundle Detail page as an evolving entity
Creating excitement before
the bundle is released through
Artist polls and wishlists
Emphasizing scarcity
and ephemerality to increase
the perceived value for fans
Transforms into an archive,
a digital collectible for super fans
to continually engage with