Information Architecture & Onboarding
User data revealed that many artists were involved in multiple teams, working both as solo artists and as part of bands. While the existing application UI provided an aggregated view of content and data for all users, interviews highlighted a key issue: users managing multiple artist teams struggled with clarity when analyzing individual artist revenue and overall performance. This insight presented an opportunity to redesign the platform’s information architecture from the user perspective.
Research
We interviewed 20 artist users involved in more than one team. Each interview lasted 30–40 minutes and followed an open-ended format with a consistent set of leading questions focused on clarity and ease of using the platform for managing multiple artist teams.
The interviews revealed that these users needed to operate separately for each team, unlike business or entity administrators.
Product Feature Vision
melabel aimed to pivot from being solely a distribution and promotion platform to becoming a full-featured music business
operations (MBO) platform. This transformation would allow independent artists to utilize the platform from the early stages of
planning their demos through the entire lifecycle of a release.
This shift required a deeper understanding of the operational activities of artist teams throughout the release lifecycle. To achieve
this, we conducted a pilot program with four artist teams of varying sizes. During the pilot, we engaged weekly with a key team
member and provided support throughout the release process. As a result of this exercise, we identified three main areas of
operations and ideate specific features within those categories.
AI Assistant
The feature stack enabled users to manage all their music business operations in
one place. However, it did not eliminate the complexity of performing these tasks
within the platform.
We concluded that users needed this solution on the go, as a mobile application.
Yet, executing these tasks on a smaller screen posed significant challenges.
To address this, we ideated a mobile AI Assistant solution capable of performing
most tasks through user prompts on a mobile device. Leveraging mobile
components within our design system allowed us to quickly prototype and test
this idea. We call it “Tansen” the AI Assistant for music business.