Yonder Music Hear Forever
1
The Background
Yonder Music is a highly localized music streaming service in Asia, offering subscribers to Yonder’s partnered mobile networks with commercial-free access to millions of songs to stream, download and share. A first in digital music, Yonder offers its core streaming service to subscribers for free by shifting the cost responsibility from the user to the mobile network providers. Its existing native applications were hampered by a less than ideal design that drove many users to seek out digital music elsewhere.
Code and Theory partnered with Yonder to help with the digital reimagining of its native applications (iOS and Android). Over an extensive timeline involving strategy, user-experience and visual design, we worked together to create a one of a kind mobile music experience that demonstrated the enormous value of Yonder’s product offering.
2
The Challenge
Since its launch in early 2016, Yonder grew rapidly to over 1 million users across Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh, but struggled to retain its existing customer base due to usability challenges within the app.
Major Challenges in the App
- Feature overload. Users didn’t understand the value or functionality of the various features and didn’t know where or how to access them.
- Many users experienced frustrations and confusion when inaccurate content was recommended to them or downloaded to their devices without their consent.
- Key discovery features such as search were not functioning properly.
- Yonder’s editorial voice was nearly non-existent.
3
Experience Insight
It's All About the Content
We realized that we needed to consolidate all the discovery features for user ease into a single section of the app, and reduce all the unwanted and superfluous secondary features. We focused on making a robust editorial voice and suggestions that helped the users. More than anything, a functional search would be critical to users who are interested in easily finding the music they want to hear.
A Personalized Experience for Every User
Conscious of the fact that music is personal, and interests vary based on territory, age and individuals, we started looking into new content suggestions that could be offered to users. People love to connect with other music fans and artists, share playlists, and feel like part of a community, which was further encouraged by our playlist curation features, and karaoke.
4
The Solution
A Simplified Experience
When envisioning a ground-up redesign, Yonder sought to increase music track-plays and user retention across all territories, as well as offer a unique music experience unlike any other. Solving these issues required several factors to come together. A ground-up reimagining of the app experience was needed, with a critical focus on search, and including the introduction of new innovative features.
A simplified experience backed up by a clear app structure and user-centric navigation for users served both existing and new user bases. We allowed users to explore the app without the burden of registration, for simplified accessibility.
New and Innovative Features
We also introduced a few new features. A new core Karaoke feature, with a low barrier of entry and a highly-consumptive and shareable format, made for a highly adductive and community building experience for the users. Users would be able to then share 29 seconds of their recordings with other Yonder users and on their favorite social networks. In addition, the format encouraged community interaction through liking, sharing, and duets. The highly customizable clips and static or animated stickers enabled extra visual dimension to the performances. Local artists could contribute and collaborate through the karaoke, promoting the local cultural environment, and catalyzing exposure. Song lyrics synchronized to the music playback whenever they were available by license.
Personalized Experience for Every User
We were resolved to form a one-to-one relationship with every user and retain them through personalized features and content recommendations. The experience would be enhanced through in-app messaging, meaningful content recommendations, and features that adapt and optimize based upon each user’s interests and usage. We provided Yonder with the toolkit to plan, manage, publish and optimize content to deliver contextually relevant personalized experiences.
5
The Conclusion
A Rich Future of Possibility
With a future-facing visual design, a clear and user-centric experience design and the inclusion of a fully-socialized Karaoke feature, Yonder has differentiated itself from its digital competitors. The application now holistically supports Yonder’s ambitions to scout local talent in each of their active territories while delivering a best-in-class core music streaming experience that boasts a global library of popular music along with locally-popular independent musicians. Using their newfound editorial voice in a gorgeous and simplified Discovery experience, Yonder serves every user in each territory fresh and exciting music while building a an incredible library of UGC through their community of in-app Karaoke singers.
Yonder is poised to expand into many new territories across Asia and Africa, with their applications now earning fantastic reviews in their respective app stores. Additionally, Yonder is in early planning phases for an international-scale, live-activation of the Karaoke feature which will use the application as the exclusive vehicle for entry/participation which would position Yonder as a territory-leader in connected digital/physical music experiences.
