Smart DJ — A music re/discovery experience for Zune

Back in 2007 I joined the Microsoft Zune team. As a product manager I was on the founding Zune team and spent 4 years creating features and products. Some example products I was super proud of leading the team from ideation to ship of MS’es first end to end podcasting solution, and (to this day) the most advanced music metadata management and editing capabilities. The feature I was most proud to however, was Smart DJ, a music matching experience.

My vision for Zune music was to enable users to rediscover the music they love in their own collections, and discover new music from the Zune song catalog. Rediscovery came from hearing music in a users local collection, and discovery from unheard songs in the Zune catalog. When Smart DJ shipped, it was highly regarded by the press (see examples of press articles below), subscriptions for the Zune Pass went up, and there was an increase in retention as subscribers found continued value in the service. The engineering team was beyond happy and I was awarded a patent for the matching algorithm and a design patent for the Smart DJ iconography.

Starting in 1999 music sales decreased from $19B/year to $6.3B/year in 2009. Downloading and digital piracy were rampant. iTunes launched in 2001 and quickly became the preferred legal alternative, etc. Microsoft launched Zune as a competitor in 2007.

Source: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/

In 2008, the USA was witnessing a sea-change in music listening habits. Customers were beginning to rely on services to auto-generate personalized song queues, and in the early stages of using the cloud for music playback and storage. Services were competing to curate lists of songs that users would want to hear based. Users were turning to cloud services such as LastFM and Pandora for unbounded (infinite) live streaming experience. They looked to local based software like iTunes Genius to auto-generated finite playlists based on the music in their local collection.

Zune users were being forced to actively curate their own playlists. Playlist features within the Zune music service (such as Zune Channels) were not being used. There was no sit-back-and-listen automatic song queuing / playlist generating functionality. The Zune Pass music service was suffering from low activation despite high acquisition rates generated by large marketing spend. Retention of subscribers was low as users failed to get enough value from their Zune Passes and cancelled their subscriptions. Further, Microsoft was late to the portable music market and Zune was struggling for relevance and usage.

Zunes assets included a music streaming subscription service with 6 million+ catalog of songs to stream/download (at $14.99 a month), software for managing user’s music collection (averaging 3Gb of MP3s) and several Zune device SKUs (3 versions had been launched).

The goals I set out for the team included:

1. Creating an integrated user experiences for (re)discovery
2. Enable smart (algorithmically chosen) discovery of music from Zune catalog
3. Enhance Zune Pass holder experience (Smart DJ gets better with Zune Pass)
4. Rationalize similar concepts that existed for music lists across the Zune ecosystem (there were at least 3 disparate solutions attempting to solve the problem released that had little to no adoption).

The key user stories I set forth to solve where:

1. Playing a queue of songs based on the seed chosen (seed could be artist, genre, song, album)
2. Create a playlist of songs based on a seed that could be taken on the go and offline.
3. Save favorite seeds of music for quick access
4. Elevate the user’s experience with a Zune Pass.

Ensuring Zune Smart DJ was received well by customers involved inventing an algorithm that would match songs and output an unbounded queue of music (better than competitors), as well as craft a delightful user experience presented the output intuitively across key Zune experiences. We learned and gained confidence when our AB tests showed that the quality of Smart DJ song queues were higher than all competitors’ output. User research testing helped craft and refine a minimum lovable product that met our stated goals.

Zune Smart DJ was the most often and positively talked about feature in the Zune HD release by the news outlets, and the feature resulted in increased retention and activation %s. Further, the engineering team was incredibly happy with the project — several vetern ‘softies said it was the coolest project they had ever worked on.

Media Impressions

CNET http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-10352637-27.html

Within the Zune PC software, my favorite surprise was the Smart DJ feature, which sets up an endlessly rotating playlist based on a particular song or artist. Like a lot of other Zune features, it works best if you’ve got a Zune Pass (which costs $14.99 a month) — in this case, it’ll rotate not only through songs in your collection but also through the millions of songs in the Zune Marketplace, delivering the same kinds of surprises that Pandora fans have grown to love. If you don’t have the Zune Pass, it simply draws songs from your collection, similar to how iTunes Genius works (in this case, Marketplace songs are greyed out but clickable if you want to buy them).

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Zune 4.0: The Complete Feature List Rundown

…you know the iTunes 9 Genius feature? That is kind of what you get with Smart DJ. Let us make clear, though, Smart DJ is better. Why? A few reasons. First, Smart DJ allows you to choose an artist, album, or song as the starting point to creating a custom mix — but it gets better. You see, Smart DJ will mix in results from both your personal library, as well as from the Zune Marketplace. Tracks that are from the marketplace are distinguished by the font color. If you are a Zune Pass subscriber, this means that the mixes are created with all data available in the Zune Marketplace, whether you have it on your computer or not. Compared to the iTunes Genius feature, this is a complete win for Zune. If you aren’t a Zune Pass subscriber, the Marketplace tracks still appear, but when you play the playlist, it will just skip over anything you don’t own — but you can just buy it with a click to incorporate it into your collection.

The Smart DJ feature is fantastic for discovering new music, especially for those who are Zune Pass subscribers.

~Andrew Edwards, Gear Live

http://www.gearlive.com/news/article/q309-zune-4.0-the-complete-feature-list-rundown/

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Just a quick post to talk about the Smart DJ feature in the latest release (Version: 4.0.740.0) of the Zune software.

There are several web sites that read from a database of music-listening user preferences, and display music maps based on an artist or song (music-map.com, for one).

Zune has taken that one step further with their Smart DJ feature, which allows you to select an artist, album, or a song, and have the Smart DJ create a playlist based on similar songs, artists, genres, or whatever black magic it uses to determine the relationship between two pieces of music.

~ Doug Butscher, Geeks With Blogs

Zune | Smart DJ

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The best new feature is something Microsoft calls “Smart DJ.” There’s a new Smart DJ icon on every album and artist in your collection or the marketplace. Click this to get a custom playlist of that artist and similar ones. It’s a bit like Pandora, only it generates a playlist about 30 items long instead of a continuous stream. Unlike iTunes 9’s new Genius Mix feature, it includes both local content and streaming music from the marketplace (you can turn that off if you like). You can even save any Smart DJ mix as a playlist, and then adjust how long it should be (in songs or minutes) and how often (in days) it should be refreshed, if at all. You can then sync these Smart DJ playlists to your Zune device, and it’ll be refreshed when you sync.

Features like these add tremendous value to the Zune Pass, Microsoft’s $15 a month all-you-can-eat music subscription service. Smart DJ is a great way to discover and download new music.

~Jason Cross, Maximum PC

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/zune_hd

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The new Smart DJ feature showcases the power of the Zune software and services by creating endless playlists using any artist, album or song as the starting point. For Zune Pass subscribers, Smart DJ will queue song recommendations from both the customer’s collection and from more than 6 million tracks in the

Zune Marketplace. Nonsubscribers will get Smart DJ recommendations from the user’s music collection.

From: A review on new Microsoft Zune HD Media Player

~ Amarendra Bhushan, CEO World Magazine

http://ceoworld.biz/ceo/2009/09/19/a-review-on-new-microsoft-zune-hd-media-player/

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The 4.0 Zune Marketplace upgrade (the Zune equivalent of iTunes) now has a ‘Smart DJ’ feature that is a much improved version of the old Channels. I actually find it very useful now, and what’s even better is that if you have Zune Pass you can specify whether it should pull music exclusive from your collection, from the Zune Pass selection, or from a combination of both. It’s wonderfully flexible and lots of fun.

~ E. Yasi, Amazon Customer Reviews

http://www.amazon.com/Zune-Video-MP3-Player-Platinum/dp/B002JPITY8