Song For Song designed branding logo

Concept UI of platform landing page

Concept UI for after login

Concept UI of what an example recommendation page might look like.

Quick Details

Song for Song is a product/project still in it's infancy that I began investigating in the Spring of 2021. In short Song for Song is a low latency social media platform and community for sharing and finding new musical interests.

The inspiration for this product came from a need for digital means to comfortably share music with my friends and also find related music through the power of collective human intelligence. Why did Spotify keep suggesting the same song that I just listened to? Why is the UX so clunky to open up a link to a song that my friend just texted me? Why aren't the suggestions within algorithmically generated playlists more in line with my expectations? There are some lines within algorithms that don't get drawn, connections that we humans make that are yet to be understood by AI - with this project I set out to research the fine line that is the deviation between our own and communal data's interpretation of sound.

  • Role: Product Design and Engineering
  • Hardware: Webdev
  • Languages: HMTL, CSS, Javascript, Google Firebase
  • Platforms: Backend connection to Spotify, Public Webpage
  • Time Frame: TBD

Responsibilities

This proposed system would be structured through Spotify accounts and allow users to recommend songs to one another with similar interests with small opportunities for specific commentary. Communications among users are rooted in controlled interactions that are either multiple-choice options or highly moderated short snippets.

Product goals for this project include:

  • Hand music finding and sharing power back to people, and away from algorithmically curated and biased playlists
  • Ease music finding for the general public by using the power of collective intelligence over artificial intelligence.
  • Create an opportunity for people of similar musical interests to connect in a surface-level manner.
  • Ensure friendly conduct and a safe environment for music hunting.

    • I wanted to make sure I did my due dilligence in research before taking on this project. This included analysis of current music social media platforms, current forms of sharing music other than social media, past forms of sharing music, and analysis on implications thereof user privacy, redundant suggestion algorithms, and other forms of arising tech.

  • I went through an extensive discovery process before arriving at this final product idea - find my thoughts here!
  • Find my planning and execution definition of prototype documentation here!

    • Outcome & Skills Learned

    This project is still very new so outcomes and skills learned are still TBD. I will note though that I've already learned quite a bit in terms of sociological and psychological paradigms of communal music sharing and do intend to do much more research in this realm!