music UX

Modest Mouse has a new collection of B-sides from their past two releases ( Good News for People Who Love Bad News and We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank ). On their web site, you can listen to the tracks by clicking a very prominent 'Launch Player' link on the top of the homepage. When I first used the Player, I had trouble accessing the songs but was quickly presented a popup indicating that the service was temporarily unavailable. What I liked is that when the popup opened, everything else in the window (behind the popup) became blurry. This method of focusing the user's attention on one window, though not revolutionary (it's used on both the Mac and Windows OS), is helpful and takes the cognitive burden off users .

I don't make many predictions but I really think that Spotify will change music. Developed by a group of folks from Sweden, it is a P2P streaming music application with a library of some 6 million songs that you can listen to whenever you have the app running (desktop or mobile). With minimal advertising in the free version, think of it as Hulu for music. Later this year, it will be availble to users in the US (licensing issues) including an iPhone app which could really affect the whole notion of paying for music downloads. Why is it so good? Well, you can listen to whatever you want, create playlists and even cache songs to listen to while you're not connected, but most importantly, the UI is clean and easy to use making the user experience great. Spotify has a good visual layout; screen density is low and navigation is inituitive and flexible helping users find music quickly . On the left side, for example, the Search box, recently saved searches and the album cover li...

Guy Garvey is the lead singer of one of my favorite bands, Elbow, and every Sunday, I make breakfast while listening to Guy Garvey's Finest Hour online at BBC's 6 Music. Effective screen layout and clear labeling make finding and listening to this weekly program a simple and great user experience. From the BBC homepage, I navigated to the 6 Music site and program page easily. Overall, the site uses white space and orange links effectively to help listeners find what they're looking for and clear labels in the navigation menu (e.g. 'Presenters and Shows') guided me right to the program page. I selected the 'Sunday' link on the right side which launched a separate BBC Player application allowing me to listen to the show. The Player itself has main tabs including 'More Like This' which recommends other 6 Music programs like Guy's. Check it out whilst you make your breakfast.

Sub Pop is a legendary record label based in Seattle that has signed great bands like The Shins, The Postal Service and Nirvana. They recently celebrated their 2oth anniversary and they have a great site full of artist info, photography and a Listen feature which allows users to stream music. However, when purchasing music, the transactional flow of the site is confusing. After adding an album (in MP3S format) by the Vaselines to the the shopping cart, I noticed several options including login, create an account, a delete icon, a link to the album and a checkout icon. However, a few of these items were unclear. I'm not sure why one would want to create an account (from the shopping cart) and there is no helpful information on the subsequent 'Sign Up' screen to explain the benefit or creating an account. The login and account options would be better placed outside the context of the shopping cart area or simply introduced at the beginning of the checkout process. I finally...

Mozy is an online data backup service perfect for those worried about losing their digital music library (like me). Users can get 2 GB of storage for no charge and unlimited storage for $4.95. Creating a new account and backing up data is very easy and, more importantly, the clear calls to action and simple workflow make for a great overall experience. The cleanly designed homepage and prominent 'Sign up now!' button clearly tell users what they can do right from the start. Creating an account was very fast (about 3 minutes); I chose the monthly payment option, presented credit card information and quickly downloaded the application to my Mac. Once the setup was completed, I was able to configure my backup by checking boxes for each type of data (iTunes library, photos, etc.) and begin the backup process. Although the first backup can take several days, I'll sleep better knowing that my Smiths bootlegs are now safe and secure.