Empower one of the three biggest music forces in the world, Warner Music Group, to thrive in the data-driven transformation that has disrupted creative industries for good.
PROJECT BACKGROUND
With the fast pace of the tech scene, Warner Music Group had been trying to keep track of all their artists’ data using an inefficient system. Facing the risk of overlooking the growth and performance of the artists, they approached CLEVER°FRANKE to create a cutting edge, holistic solution that would streamline their existing tools in order to connect their users with data.
The C°F team developed OPUS that provides a vision and a solution, tailored to the needs of WMG’s music community. OPUS unifies different tools and data sources while connecting many labels, and ultimately giving managers more time to devote to their artists. All within one application utilizing a story-telling adaptive interface. OPUS is setting new standards in the music industry by introducing a solution that’s being applied to various touchpoints. With a highly user-friendly interface, look and feel, it harmonizes with the world of WMG. OPUS speaks to the heart, eye and mind of the users, enabling everyone within WMG to take informed decisions anytime, anywhere.
TARGET AUDIENCE
Artist managers, label managers and WMG executives.
SOLUTION
Create a personalized and scalable digital ecosystem that allows the user to focus on the right trends, thereby opening up greater opportunities of using data from high-level perspectives to the tiniest details.
RESULT
A digital music intelligence platform consisting of a highly user-friendly dashboard, providing WMG with up-to-date and tailored data insights that assist with the right business decisions.
RESEARCH
The main challenge we identified was more intricate than a technical one, it was about the target group: how to enable users in a creative industry, who are disconnected from data, to leverage the power of data? We aimed to delicately balance the culture of music industry — driven by passion and creativity — with a data-driven transformation that fosters rational decision making.
To do so we’ve involved ±100 people within the organization. Through an extensive discovery and definition phase, tapping into many service design and design thinking principles, we defined our strategy and roadmap.
WMG employees and partners were using many tools which required them to conduct manual tasks. To counter this, we envisioned OPUS as a unifying platform that would eliminate mistakes caused by inconsistencies in manual data entry and allow people to work efficiently.
Two workshops were held at key locations for Warner Music Group (New York & London), followed by a series of 60 user interviews. The main focus of these were to uncover the insights different users were looking for and define what we call their ‘meaningful moments’: what are crucial decision moments in their lives where can we support and amplify their creativity with data?
Doing so, we realized that gathering data is important, but how to present it equally matters. Our solution was to bring a fresh perspective to conventional dashboards by presenting data not merely as numbers, but as a comprehensive story. Data can be viewed in numerous ways, but right from the start we aimed to simplify the experience of the end-user by providing the most relevant data types and sources.
INTERFACE DESIGN
Our solution required an interface that would be attuned to immensely diverse needs of users and solve potential problems seamlessly. The main entry point is the ‘OPUS Today’ interface that can be accessed from anywhere at any time, presenting the latest performance results of entities (track, artist, label). Traditional dashboards follow the same paradigm: adding yet another filter to a dropdown with many filters that users do not even use. Instead, we aimed to achieve utmost usability by providing contextual filters, designing simple navigation and interaction structures.
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IDENTITY DESIGN
The visual language of the music industry is bold, iconic and expressive. Whereas the traditional dashboard designs are packed with dense numbers and facts, providing drab visual experiences that do not invite the user. OPUS builds a bridge between these two, allowing creative people to physically and mentally connect with data by using the right ingredients: an attractive, fresh look that is easy on the eye. The entire visual identity is created to let everyone at WMG have confidence in that ‘OPUS is here to help’; making them feel fully supported by an easy to approach, reliable personal assistant.
We decided to use bright colors to bring the vibrant language of the music industry with a bold typography that lifts up the static look of standard dashboards and give an airy feeling. The dynamic color palette — dominated by the blue in WMG’s identity — allows the entire design to be flexible in order to support many variations of data presentations.
ADAPTIVE INTERFACE
As an approach to dealing with the ultimate desire to view “everything by everything”, which would result in an endless interface, OPUS has an adaptive interface which reduces the amount of permutations to the most meaningful ones. The interface adjusts itself based on the data displayed and understanding of the user to show only significant data and allow relevant interactions with the data. OPUS also adopts a Smart UI that provides contextual feedback. Any user behavior is reflected automatically on the design without constantly interrupting users to ask their preference.
NOTIFICATION SYSTEM
OPUS contains a notification system that allows users to set personalized notifications to their mobile device (WhatsApp / Text message), email or smartwatch. E.g.: “Send me a message when Bruno Mars has hit 5 billion streams”. It also runs in lobbies and on screens in WMG offices throughout the world, focused on creating the ‘water cooler effect’: while getting a coffee one can get a ‘feeling’ of the performance of artists.
TECHNOLOGY
Rather than setting out a comprehensive monolithic software platform from the outset, we created a flexible system comprised of smaller components that would make the lives of users’ easier step by step. An intelligent interface that knows about their interests and responsibilities, so we can provide them with relevant information and avoid data overload.
Together with WMG we defined the approach to the API, how things are structured, which functionalities / features are needed to make a smart, personalized experience. We’ve decided to use the OpenAPI specification format because it makes all the agreements between different parties explicit so that there are no complications or mistakes. Since we continuously get new data sources and types, we also use schema validation to safeguard the consistency of our data structure.
The entire front-end development of OPUS is put into production by C°F using React and D3.js. In order to build OPUS as a modern web application, we chose to use React as it allows to reuse the data even though it repeatedly changes or is updated. We also utilized D3.js library which is ideal for data visualizations because it provides graph related functionalities.
RESULT
OPUS is bringing WMG to a new reality through a data-driven transformation: faster access to data, making smarter decisions and exploring deeper levels. It has become the ultimate personal assistant to the WMG teams around the world by putting them in effective dialogue with data and guiding the organization to success. We’re constantly engaged with the meaning of data, its value to the business and how to balance between simplicity and depth to enhance OPUS.
FULL CASE
LIMITATION
Due to the confidentiality of this project, this is unfortunately all we can show.
Due to the confidentiality of this project, this is unfortunately all we can show.
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