Lstnr+User+Needs

=Lstnr User Needs Report=

Intro:
Lstnr is an artist discovery service for UMD musicians to connect with other students, and develop a solid fan base. It will allow musicians to have more control over the exposure they get on campus. It will allow musicians to have a better understanding of their fans. It will allow fans to have a better understanding of the musicians. Lstnr is great for everyone in the UMD music scene.

__Step 1: Generating a list of expected users, and an initial list of tasks.__
We split our users into two categories: UMD musicians who want to showcase their music, and UMD students who want to discover and support local music. We call the latter type of user a "Lstnr" to differentiate the two. At the core our website is built for two simple tasks: an artist can upload their music and Lstnrs can listen to and vote for artists they enjoy. While there are other venues and services for artists to be discovered, some appeal to too broad of an audience for the artist to be noticed, and others lack a way for artists to truly connect with fans. Lstnr allows artists to gain exposure and feedback in a small setting first and listeners a chance to discover new music.

3 Key Questions for a potential "Lstnr":
How do you...
 * discover new artists on campus?
 * connect with artists you like?
 * find out about upcoming performances and new music?
 * show your support for new artists?

For our initial tasks we spoke with one "Lstnr" and from that brainstormed tasks we could reasonably expect a "Lstnr" and an artist to perform.

Lstnr: 20 year old male UMD undergraduate, a local UMD music enthusiast
We learned that currently there are no simple means to discover new artists at UMD. Our music enthusiast said, "I basically hear about new artists when they are playing in front of Stamp." He went on to tell us the best way he knows how to stay connected with an artist is to go to their Facebook page. There, users can see upcoming shows and listen to music. When asked how he liked the service, the interviewee replied that he "[has] to put up with it." His major frustration was not being able to listen to music without "liking" the band's page first: "How will I know I like it if I haven't heard it yet?" To show support, he tells his friends and family about the band, and if he does in fact like their music, will "like" the band page.

As an artist:

 * 1) Upload music to make it available to fans (and others)
 * 2) Create a profile page where Lstnrs can:
 * Hear music uploaded by the artist
 * See upcoming shows / events
 * 1) View fan comments
 * 2) View fan numbers / membership

As a Lstnr:

 * 1) Listen to artists' music
 * 2) Vote for artists and music they enjoyed
 * 3) View profiles to learn more about the artist
 * 4) See upcoming shows / events
 * 5) Connect with other UMD students that share similar musical interests
 * 6) Chat with artists

__Step 2: Validating the tasks.__
Unfortunately we did not have access to any of the aspiring artists or bands on campus, so we could not get input (yet) from that user group. However, we were able to review our initial list of tasks with some more potential "Lstnrs." With their opinions we revised our initial list of tasks to make the website more effective for its audience.

One example: similar websites make the user focus on a single artist or band at a time. The user has to manually navigate to other artists to listen to new music. Users said that because they generally have no idea about the new bands they're trying to discover, it is difficult to make decisions about who to listen to next. Having a radio stream (a la Pandora) for genres that the user chooses removes unnecessary user input, and encourages users to listen to music they might not have originally. This gives artists more exposure, and broadens a "Lstnr's" musical tastes.

As an artist:

 * Create and maintain a profile page
 * List artists or bands that inspired their music
 * Recommend other similar local artists
 * Publish performance dates and venues
 * Track popularity trends ("Popularity up 34%", or "This band was liked 1000 times this week")
 * Upload music and tag songs with their genre + band name
 * View a list of fans
 * Have open chats for fans to join in on
 * Possibility to receive more exposure when selected as the "Random Artist of the Day" + front page recognition
 * Track their music statistics; which songs were liked and how often
 * Communicate / collaborate with other artists / bands

As a Lstnr:

 * Listen to radio streams that are categorized by genre
 * See which artists or bands are getting popular
 * View performance dates + locations
 * Connect with other UMD students who share the same musical interests
 * Chat with artists
 * Vote for artists / songs that they enjoyed listening to
 * Sharing artists / songs with friends via Lstnr, Google+, Facebook, Twitter,etc.
 * View artists profiles
 * Search for artists based on influence / genre
 * Purchase songs or donate to artists
 * Purchase artist merchandise
 * Be recommended music based off their listening habits

__Step 3: Deciding upon key users and a tentative list of requirements.__
We boiled Lstnr down to the core: we want artists to publish their music, and "Lstnrs" to, well, listen to it. Everything else comes second, so we organized our list down to what we have below.

Absolutely Must Include:

 * Create and maintain a profile page
 * Upload music tagged by genre + band
 * Publish performance dates and venues
 * Track popularity trends
 * Listen to radio streams categorized by genre
 * Recommend music from similar artists
 * Search for artist profiles
 * Vote for artists / songs they enjoyed

Should Include:

 * Artist of the Day: Featured front page views for new / upcoming artists
 * Purchase songs or donate to artists
 * Track listening habits and recommend new music from similar artists / similar users' listening habits
 * Share songs via other social media networks

Could Include:

 * Chatting with artists
 * Connect with other UMD students who share the same musical interests
 * See which artists or bands are getting popular
 * Purchase artist merchandise
 * Communicate / collaborate with other artists / bands

Key Users:
We kept our key users pretty simple:
 * Local UMD artists needing an easy way to organize their media for publishing + discovery
 * Local UMD undergraduates needing an easy way to find local musicians

__Addendum: References__
We were only able to find one possible academic paper for use in our project, but mostly we compared ourselves to other competing music listening services.

In this paper, the authors describe a way of recommending music based off of other users' listening habits. This will hopefully mesh perfectly with the goal of our project.
 * Hung-Chen Chen and Arbee L. P. Chen. 2001. A music recommendation system based on music data grouping and user interests. In //Proceedings of the tenth international conference on Information and knowledge management// (CIKM '01), Henrique Paques, Ling Liu, and David Grossman (Eds.). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 231-238.**

We analyzed band pages such as the one for Rusko ([]) and compared it to how that would work for local UMD artists. It does not make sense that you must like a song before you can listen to it, as pointed out by our music enthusiast.
 * Facebook.** [|www.facebook.com].

We also analyzed band pages for artists on MySpace, and while it has a better access to listening to music than Facebook did, we still feel it lacks the personal touch a local artist would like.
 * Myspace.** [|www.myspace.com].

This is a tool used by many artists to organize their music on Facebook. It has the same structure as the Rusko band page linked to previously, and all comments applied towards that apply to this as well.
 * Root Music. [].**

This is also related to Facebook, but instead allows for friends to listen to music together in real time. This would be a great way for our users to connect, however we would limit the scope to local UMD artists.
 * turntable. [].**