GitHub
SongQ
Democratization of Music Entertainment
What is the future of Spotify? Think of new and innovative product strategies.
Business Case to Address:
(Product Solution for Spotify's Official Case Competition)
INSPIRATION
After attending several parties and gatherings both in and out of Berkeley, our team members felt there was one dominating person who would control the music for the entire duration of events. Music is an important aspect of a social gathering and contributes to the vibe, but if the attendees of the event cannot have a say in the music they listen to, then it truly doesn’t allow everyone in the gathering to have fun.
Our team felt passionate about making social gatherings fun and inclusive for everyone, and by allowing everyone to have a say in the music they listen to, our innovation can bring people closer together and enable everyone to have fun! Our innovation ultimately shapes the culture of the music entertainment sphere.
PRODUCT OVERVIEW
TickIn's Song Queue is a feature that can be integrated into another live music streaming app, like Spotify, or serve as an independent application. The feature “democratizes music entertainment” by allowing everyone to have a voice in the music they listen to. Essentially, once an attendee of an event has the ‘Tickin Song Queue” app, he/she has a fair share of control of the 'aux cord' or DJ.
Our feature introduces a gamification tactic for increasing engagement of the attendees and creating a community around the music streaming app they are using. The attendee can add their preferred song to the queue every 15 minutes with the free version, or add their song to the queue every 10 minutes with the paid version. Additionally, every attendee has the option to “vote against” the current song they are listening to if they don’t like the song. Free users have 1 vote every 20 minutes, while paid users have one vote every 10 minutes. Meanwhile, a DJ or event host will be in control of the web application, which broadcasts the songs in the queue, and displays the number of votes against a song. Once the number of votes against the current song has reached a certain threshold, the current song will be popped off the queue and the next song will be played.
By enabling a free and paid version of the application, we allow the entire community to participate and truly provide a democratic music environment by positively shaping the culture of music entertainment.
TECHNICAL OVERVIEW
We have created both the mobile and the back end web application for “Ticking Song Queue.” We used Java to design the back-end for the app via Android Studio. We created the mobile app to show how the TickIn application would work when it is a separate application. We also used Spotify’s SDK to show how the application would work when it is integrated into another live music streaming platform like Spotify.
The web application was used to show how an event host, for example, can view the queue of songs and the number of votes against the current song. The web application was built on Ruby on Rails and used the PostgreSQL open source database for the front end. JSON and SQL were used to receive and store information from the mobile application on the back end. When a song or vote is submitted via the mobile app, the web application updates the sql database to add one song or one vote, and the front end displays that change.
PROJECTIONS & GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGY
Our go-to market strategy is to present our product idea to various music streaming platforms such that they can integrate it into their application. For example, Spotify could integrate this feature into their music streaming application, and this feature would also be a short-term strategy to emphasize their core value of “music for everyone” and simultaneously increase the application’s active user base and generate more revenue.
TickIn Song Queue could also be presented as an independent application for music streaming, but it will need access to the licensed music and playlists. Therefore, we believe the best go-to market strategy is to market this feature to various music-streaming applications so that it can be integrated into their application as an additional feature for generating more revenue.
PITCH DECK
(Presented for Spotify's Official Case Competition)
Business Case to Address: What is the future of Spotify? Think of new and innovative product strategies.
