Overview
Comment function
One improvement that the focus group had talked about and one of our team members had found during research was the possibility of leaving a comment on a song. Said comment could either be visible for everyone or just friends. It would be helpful to share songs and directly leave a review underneath them for others to see.
Having the comments be visible for friends only would prevent public negativity on songs and merely be a way for friends connected over the streaming platform to communicate and share their opinions.
It would also be a nice way to leave notes for oneself directly in the app which could be used for multiple purposes such as reminders, looking back at songs, figuring out how they affected oneself, whether or not they work with others and much more. Having a comment function, in general, could be a nice addition to the streaming platform.
Song catcher
Most people interested in music and listening to it, find new songs while they’re out and about should know about the application Shazam which is a Song catcher, scanning music coming in through a mobile device’s microphone and then finding the appropriate song for it on the internet.
Even though Shazam is already connected to Spotify when the song is available on the platform, a song catcher built into Better Spotify, which doesn’t just take the song itself but a sung / hummed version of it when one is trying to remember both music / lyrics themselves would be extremely handy to have.
It would improve the way to find music in the app itself a lot even though the AI behind the song recognition would have to be trained very specifically for the directly sung / hummed version of songs.
Personal Usage Statistics
Something so incredibly banal but nice to have would be a view of the personal usage of the app. Spotify already started doing it with their Spotify Rewinds at the end of every year and yet the app fails to provide proper views and numbers for the user to be constantly available.
Tracking one’s listening history over time, the amount of time spent on the app, which genre’s are the user’s current favourite, how many playlists have been listened to how many times, which songs in them are skipped over a lot while others have been listened to on repeat. Statistics like those aren’t just interesting for the app itself but especially for the user to see. A positive example already presenting this form of feature would be Audible.
They could be used to self-analyse, adjust listening behaviour or even just to chat with friends and compare different statistical points.
Shortcuts
Shortcuts nowadays are something that we could not imagine living without it. Having Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, the F5 button to reload and so many more are doing nothing but make our lives easier. Having the possibility of adding shortcuts like these to Better Spotify
- playing the chosen song
- making new playlists
- stopping
- muting
- shuffling
- switching tabs within the application
So far there are only extensions to browsers that make it possible for the user to have keyboard shortcuts which is definitely a missed opportunity when it comes to the usability of the app. Especially thinking about people not being able to click precisely with a mouse would have it much easier pressing one or two buttons to achieve the same thing. Inclusivity is something that definitely needs to be a part of a web applications design.