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Showing posts from March, 2010

Redesigning the MySpace music player

Originally a major competitor to Facebook, MySpace has evolved from a being a place for 'friendships' to an important site in digital music. Like Facebook, artists can create profile pages for fans to follow but artists can also embed songs into a music player for fans to listen to. This functionality has really opened the door for discovering new music (especially for new artists who don't have a label or a means of distribution and marketing). However, MySpace's music player (above) suffers from some usability issues including small controls and an inefficient screen layout . When advancing through a song, users have to move a very small slider control that requires unnecessary precision . An improved, larger control would be much easier to click and drag than the current small rectangle shape. Also, the two-row layout of songs in the artist's queue is inefficiently designed . A maximum of only five songs can be listed in the queue at one time and then user

The MOG slider

MOG is a social networking site for people obsessed with music. In addition to connecting users with similar music tastes, they can create blog posts and manage their own profile pages. The site recently launched MOG All-Access which provides (for $5 per month) unlimited artist radio and on-demand listening (choosing any song you want at any time). After searching for and selecting an artist or song, the music player launches containing one of the best features of the MOG user experience - a slider control that lets users narrow or expand the variety of an artist radio station. Initially, the slider is positioned all the way to the left playing only songs by that artist but, by moving the slider to the right, it incrementally increases the amount of similar artists in the queue. It works really well and gives users effecient control over their music while letting them also discover new artists.