Throughout my time at University I knew I wanted to build something for the music industry. I knew there were so many broken and outdated processes, so in early 2010 I set about tackling them with a concept I called Chartburst, which was a tool to allow aspiring musicians to get their music heard by record labels.Although there were a thousand things to do as the CEO of my first startup, I was primarily in charge of shaping the product. I knew from some experience of the industry that it would need to satisfy both the needs of musicians but also the rest of the music industry, so I set about my discovery phase.
My main weapon during the discovery phase of the project was one-to-one interviews with aspiring musicians and Record Label talent scouts as these were the two sides of the equation that I believed had a need for the proposed product and so my first step was to validate this assumption.
I interviewed in excess of 20 musicians and 15 Record Label managers and talent scouts to try to understand how a digital product could streamline the process of getting new music heard by the right industry pros.
My initial concept for the product was a simple web app that allowed artists to send their top 5 demos to their chosen talent scouts (who we would advertise) but after conducting my interviews it was clear that the industry wanted some sort of pre-qualification if they were to listen to the music sourced by the product and that the product needed a USP for the artist so as not to feel like one of the myriad platforms that promised to get your music heard by professionals in the industry.
The above insights totally transformed the product for the better and resulted in the concept of Chartburst: a publicly voted music chart that allowed musicians to upload their best track and get their fans to vote for it. If it finished in the top 5 after a set period (one month), it would be sent to talent scouts at major record labels.
When I returned to the record labels the idea struck a chord with them (pun intended) and I was able to get the backing of over 30 industry professionals who would review the monthly top 5's generated from Chartburst. I felt confident that I had honed the product to a point where I could flesh out the experience.
I created a customer journey map to try to understand how the customer (aspiring musicians) would go looking for a tool like Chartburst and how their first experience with the product would pan out to eventual signup and submission of their first track to the chart, and then payment for the service.This was a very useful exercise as it showed me that I really needed a quick and painless flow from initially landing on site to getting a track uploaded to the chart. My initial idea was for a multi-step onboarding process that sold the product benefits and created the user a profile, but after some wireframe feedback sessions with artists combined with analysis of the customer journey map, I realised a much more streamlined journey was required.
Once I had decided on the key MVP functionality for the product and the optimal user journey once on site, I created a basic sitemap to show the information hierarchy and then began creating lots of wireframes in Balsamiq to get some quick feedback from artists. This was a very useful exercise as it helped me understand what the user preferred and which information was more important, but also what feature ideas weren't necessary for an MVP.The one exercise I wasn't aware of back then was 'card sorting', which I sometimes use today to help with the IA phase of a new product.
I worked alongside a local graphic designer to come up with the design.Although I'm not particularly proud of the branding, it was my first project and being self taught, I had a lot to learn about typography, layout and colours.These days of course, I almost always go for a flat, minimal design that adheres to a design system such as Material Design.
I learned that a good idea is not the same thing as a profitable business. Chartburst never made any revenue and that was down to several factors, including finding a business model that would work for struggling musicians with little spare money.
Secondly, I realised the importance of usability testing. I found that there were areas of the site where users kept leaving, and once I'd analysed this issue I found it was due to some poor user flows and generally bad UX. I didn't have enough time to do any real usability testing on the final product which left some problems in the overall experience.
Some key figures from this business venture:
• £20,000 seed investment raised
• 60,000 organic sign ups
• 4 major record labels involved
• 1,000 songs submitted per month
• Coverage on Mashable and Tech Crunch
