Spotify Genre Explorer

UX Design | Visual Design | Prototyping | Data Analysis & Visualization | Web Development & Optimization

Spotify had amassed raw data about music genres and their listener profiles, and wanted a way to present it visually as a tool for brands to use. They also wanted to get brands to think about their data in terms of audience segments. We were tasked to create an application that analyzes and visualizes this data in an easy way for their B2B audience.

The Genre Explorer is a B2B application that allows agencies and advertisers to explore all the music genres within Spotify, along with associated artists and detailed listener data.

An important requirement was to provide an experience that worked at different depths for their audience. Some of their users were very technically skilled, and excited to dive into the data, while other users were less savvy and just wanted to see a snapshot.

We had access to the Spotify API for cover art, as well as the raw data files for BPM, Acoustic-ness, Geographic Listening (by genre, sub-genre, and artist) and Audience Segments.

We created a unique circular interface for visualizing and sorting the genres and sub-genres, and a way to dig deeper into the specifics of the music and listener data.

The experience was optimized for desktop viewing based on the intended audience and usage occasions.

Brands could use the app to visualize and compare popularity, demographics, and audience segment data. The detailed information such as location data, audience demographics and streaming preferences about each selected genre, sub-genre or artist was exposed for users who wanted to explore deeper.

The Genre Explorer provided insights to brands in two ways to aid in their campaigns: to understand what their target audiences were listening to, and to discover new sub-genres of music.