When introduced to the brief of designing a music app, streaming services immediately came to mind. I think that is what most peoples experience of music based apps are. They are used by basically everyone, each person usually selecting one service and having a long term loyalty to them through building a music library with them. I think streaming services are a good place to begin my research as they truly dominate this market.
Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming services. Since it’s creation, they’ve also added podcasts and audio books to the mix.
Chris Watkins published a really interesting article about how Spotify’s UI is helping them champion the streaming services market. One point he makes is their dark UI. It has became synonymous and highly characteristic of the app and it goes far in making their icons stand out. It also is easier on user’s eyes.
Pros and Cons of Dark UI:
Pros: ✅ Distracts to a lesser extent ✅ People find data and focus sight faster on the brightest elements ✅ Saves the battery life significantly ✅ Lesser usage of energy on OLED screens
Cons: ❌ Dark UI looks unnatural ❌ Strong light conditions cause low contrast ❌ In some contexts black is badly associated
The device optimisation of Spotify also goes far to make it accessible for users who stream music on various devices. It without doubt makes the user feel they are getting the most out of their subscription.
It is evident that there is a very strong sense of visual hierarchy in this UI. The type scale is perhaps the most contrasting of all it’s competitors. The distinct visual language has remained much the same through all recent iterations of the app, contributing to it’s recognisability and familiarity from the users perspective.
The interface is largely image based, with a strong emphasis on icons, buttons and cover arts. This makes it intuitive to navigate. It doesn’t feel overwhelming in this way either. This is furthered by only having three different categories of interfaces - home, search and library. Other music streaming apps fall short in this area with many different categories which sound much the same.