UnitedMasters
UnitedMasters.
Operationalize independence for all artists. Own their masters and their future through tech, music, and storytelling.
Opportunity
Design a suite of products that any artist can use to distribute their music, connect with their fans, market themselves, and get guidance with their career through data. All with being independent and being their own label
Website
Creative Direction, User Experience, Visual Design
The website's main goal was to drive sign-ups to the product. The content is structured to be digestible, engaging, and intriguing. This allowed us to get creative within the boundaries of a modular design and have it feel a bit more customized. Scale and iteration was a big consideration for this build since things will eventually change, we can easily move and shift information without losing the integrity of the design.
Product Video
Art Direction
In the technology section of the website, there is a product video that explains what we are trying to achieve. Utilizing video helped better explain the product through our brand voice/tone with the look and feel that feels unique to UnitedMasters.
Product Experience
Creative Direction, Strategy,User Research, User Experience, Visual Design
The suite of products can be used as stand alone but if used together can be more powerful through data. All the products report back insights to what has been collected and that allows UnitedMasters to give well informed recommendations for the artist to take action on. The goal is to become a tool that the artist can make a living with their music—distribution, tours, merch, ads, brand partnerships and most importantly a direct line to their fans and superfans.
On-boarding
This is an integral part of the product because this is where the first impression lies. The design is based off the idea of "getting to know you" with little surprise and delights through the interaction and conversational language that's used to ease the user in. The artist is prompted to answer just 3 simple questions and the answers provided will help better give personalized recommendations and also allow us to better understand what products are relevant to them at that moment in their career.
Feed
The feed is the centralized home in where all data is aggregated and translated for the artist to consume in a digestible manner with actionable items to take. All the other products will provide data into their feed.
Direct to Fan Messaging
Allows the artist to message their fans directly through text, email, or social media. This give them the opportunity to market to them without cost and create a relationship with them that feels authentic. It's designed with suggested messages from data that we have so that creating a message is not a blocker. We can know if they just released music because they have distributed with us so we can generate a message that indicates a promotion of that release to their fans.
Fan Insights
With the feed acting as a vehicle for digestible data for artist, there is also a designated place for all the data that's ingested to dive deeper if they wanted. The data is presented in a way that it is phrased in a question/suggestion format and the data is the answer to that. For example, instead of just stating the top locations, it's designed to contextualize what that means for the artist. We've seen in user research with managers that these data points are used for tours and ad targeting. With this format, an artist doesn't have to work to analyze the data and they are provided with next steps to take.
Brand Partnerships
The profile and brand partnership page go hand in hand. Not only is the data being shared with the brand partnership page for possible match but the artist can also use this page to pitch themselves to playlist and other opportunities they may have outside of UnitedMasters. The data can link an artist to a brand or vice versa with common interests. This can make a better partnership and a successful campaign because it is backed up by data.
Releases and Money
Once an artist distributes a track they are now able to see it's progress (from the track's streams, repeat plays, where people are listening, age and gender, etc.). With streams comes earnings. These are two products that work closely together because of the nature of streams and payments. The Money product could be used more for other ways such as earnings from merch and can be used to pay fees from UnitedMasters.
Music Distribution
Creative Direction, Strategy,User Research, User Experience, Visual Design
Distribution is the artists' final step before their music is out for the world to hear. I wanted to make the process simple and intuitive for the artist so that this final step is not a blocker or friction point for their hard work. The flow is split into 5 easy steps, I combined all the tasks that could be together so that it was contextual and relevant in that specific task. It was important to highlight the feature of drag and drag feature as the entire screen because it made it simple and was a no-brainer. The tracks that were uploaded were auto-populated from the file name that they already named. The artist and genre were also pre filled from their profile with UnitedMasters and the other fields are defaulted with our recommendations as best practice so it makes it easier to just click next. The calendar allows the artist to plan for their release date and consider marketing plans to ramp up their music with their fans. The calendar also features other music events and holidays so that they can make better decisions for how to drop their next release.
