Our team was assigned to work on SoundSpot, an online music platform that aims to better connect musicians with their fans. For context, SoundSpot found initial success during the COVID pandemic, as it better connected listeners to their favorite musicians virtually. As the pandemic cleared, though, SoundSpot found itself falling to its competitors. Understanding this, our team “built” Backstage, an added paid feature to SoundSpot’s original platform that enables fans to access exclusive content and benefits from the musicians they love.
Initially, we had a difficult time deciding what business plan and what features could best tackle the problem we were handed. We had ideas that dipped into many user types and markets, and it often felt difficult to narrow our focus and create a concise solution or idea that addressed our problem effectively. Though with time and effort conducting market research, competitive analysis, interviews with musicians and listeners alike, we decided that a potential market need was both a emerging musician and listener focused feature. Something that supported smaller artists but also provided something to their fans (such as the services Bandcamp and Patreon). We baked this into Backstage by incorporating features such as an exclusive subscription based artist membership, where fans can pay to gain exclusive access to an artist’s content. Our team also created a portfolio feature that better promoted and highlighted the skills and art of a musician on the platform. Once the idea was fleshed out, our team was significantly more effective in executing tasks for the pitch presentation.
Overall, I had a great time working with my team. It’s always such an enriching experience to work alongside other students, learning from their manifold backgrounds and skills. Not only was everyone really cool, but everyone seemed to be effective workers and we were able to complete our project handily as a group. I also thought our teams communication was particularly strong as everyone was able to stay on the same page, and everyone always had tasks they could do. This was nice because our team always felt like it was gaining progress and never did it feel like our team was in a deadlock because of an imperfect team dynamic. Looking ahead, I’m sure our team dynamic can improve and be even more seamless, but nonetheless it was a very enjoyable experience working in a team for this class.
