Let the Music play!
Week 1 | 02.27.2018–03.01.2018 | Project Kick-off
Post written for the Designing for Service class| Spring 2018 | Carnegie Mellon School of Design | Instructor: Molly Wright Steenson & Daphne Peters| Team: Steven Ji, Devika Khowala, Emma Zelenko, and John Walker Moosebrugger
Project Kick-off
First team meeting! For our final service project, we are asked to:
consider the possibilities for business-to-business, niche audiences in business-to-consumer services, or unique ways of working with music
Together, we brainstormed and post-ited some of the directions we would like to explore. We roughly divided them into the following categories and key words
How can music benefit the listeners
- Learning languages
- Music therapy
- …
Stakeholders
- local artists (how to help promote them)
Music services in physical spaces
- Retail music
- Music in public spaces
- …
You can refer to the photo above to see all of the directions we were interested in exploring.
Next step
We decided to research on these directions individually and narrow down potential topics on Wednesday. We kept reminding each other that the direction we chose has to have potentials to grow into a service, which means that it should fit the following criteria:
- Multiple stakeholders
- Multiple touch points
- Provide stakeholder with economic outcomes that are both tangible and intangible.
Debrief
As a team, we reviewed the google doc where we aggregated relevant links and thoughts on potential directions.
After sharing thoughts with each other, we decided that we were most interested in designing/solving problems for musicians because they are the primary stakeholders of the music industry, and experiences of being a musician are well-known to be tough.
To understand what pain points music creators might encounter and to identify opportunities that we can help them/design a service for them, we decided to interview music creators we know. We brainstormed potential topics that could bring about damaging experiences for music creators :
- Career choice
- Collaboration
- Money (income, self-sustainment)
- Learning/Self-improvement
And then we build specific questions around these topics.
Next step
- Share the interview findings with each other during class and further define the project direction.
Week 3 | March 19
After narrowing in on an audience at spending some time doing research with musicians, this week we focused on exploring specific services we can offer to amateur musicians.
Scenario Planning
After some brainstorming we came up with 4 distinct services related to providing resources to local musicians and created storyboards for each one.
Scenario 1: AirBnB for Practice Space
This service would let businesses and individuals with unused space rent it out to musicians looking for places to practice.
Scenario 2: Performance Opportunities
This service would partner new musicians looking for a low pressure place to perform with local businesses looking to have live music.
Scenario 3: Podcast Reviews
This service would locate local, on-the-rise musicians and ask them to host a podcast where they review the work of musicians in their area.
Scenario 4: Tinder for musicians
This service would help musicians discover new band mates/practice partners and spaces for gigs.
Speed Dating
On Thursday we did a round of speed dating with our four scenarios. We showed our scenarios to a group of 4 classmates.
Overall we got the most feedback on Scenario 1 (AirBnB for practice space) and Scenario 4 (Tinder for bandmates and gigs.) We were a bit surprised as these were the two we thought had the least potential. The one we had felt most excited about was Scenario 2 (opportunities to perform at local businesses) but our speed daters said that existing methods already made it rather easy to find gigs (especially if no payment is requested.)
Scenario 1: AirBnB for Practice Space
- Finding a space to practice really is a current challenge
- It would be good if spaces had amps and other equipment because transporting these things is a pain
- Rather than a one time transaction, having a continuing relationship with the space provider would be preferred
- Rather than a space to practice it could be good to rent a space for a small concert
Scenario 2: Performance Opportunities
- The barriers to getting a first gig isn’t really that hard. This isn’t solving a musician pain point.
- Getting a recurring gig is the difficult part
Scenario 3: Podcast Reviews
- Getting human recommendations on local gigs or musician instead of computer generated ones is really compelling
- There’s a nice crossover of people who listen to podcasts and people who play/listen to music. Could help get a larger audience.
- Having multiple hosts or guest host could mix things up and make it more interesting
Scenario 4: Tinder for musicians
- Finding bandmates that are a good personality fit is a real struggle for musicians. This is a good area to focus on.
- Instead of discovering gigs for businesses it might be more interesting to find gigs for individuals (ex: birthday parties.) This is an area that is not currently marketed and might have more spur of the moment need (and therefore work better for discovery apps.
Next Steps
Although the podcast service was not the most popular through speed dating it is one our team is interested and want to explore further. However we acknowledge that the podcast in itself is probably not enough of a service.
We want to explore combining a few of our scenarios to create a more holistic service. Some opportunities we would like to explore is renting spaces for performances (rather than practice), building local musician communities, and creating a platform for local artist to give reviews and make recommendations.
