Saving an industry with better user experience
I had such a good experience today purchasing some music that I thought I should share the user journey.
I saw something in my facebook feed that I hadn’t seen before: a media player for an entire album. I had a quick listen and really liked what I heard. All the links point to bandcamp, where you can purchase the release.
$5? I clicked buy without thinking about it much.
The payment options are good: I can use a card or paypal, thereby avoiding entering my card details. The price is the same regardless of format. Once I had paid, the download started automatically.
- No ‘promotional period’ – my first awareness of the release was in my facebook news feed, not reading about it on pitchfork weeks or months in advance of release. This is the way things should be done: web consumers want things now, not according to someone else’s schedule. Recently I had the chance to listen to the LCD Soundsystem album in advance, but was not allowed to buy for a couple of months: that’s a missed sale.
- No follow or sign up to anything - the links went straight to purchase, avoiding facebook fan pages and suchlike. The designers of this journey recognise that the music is what the user is interested in primarily, so get out of the way and make it happen!
- The release cost $5 to purchase: brilliant. I’m convinced that the typical itunes price is too much now that music is more disposable, $5 is about right for an album (the title says EP, but its album length). I would guess that smaller labels really suffer on itunes because they can’t experiment with price.
- The social value: attaching a recommendation by friends to listening and purchasing is much more likely to result in a sale.
- Listening was made as accessible as possible: the full release, in my news feed. Normally you’d see blurb about the album, and quite often listening is painfully obstructed. In itunes you can listen to 30 seconds of each song, on bleep the music player needs to be restarted every 30 seconds – what a terrible way to encourage a purchase!
As listening and purchasing is so much more throwaway these days, labels shouldn’t stop people from listening to a release in entirety. This is a huge issue in my book: what they’ve failed to realize is that the value I place on music is established AFTER I’ve listened a few times, not before, so the upfront amount I will pay has gone way down – I won’t risk that cash on something I may not listen to much.
If I had one criticism, I’d say that the price should be advertised in the facebook player: that might have tipped the balance for some people.
Well done bandcamp for designing the player, Asthmatic Kitty for the music and the progressive pricing (and I suppose facebook for allowing this kind of media in the news feed!). If only other labels would wake up to these approaches: it really is about the experience.
Facebook?
Thank them when they have “Comment • Purchase • Like • Share • Report”…
Given they’re working on Credits it’s not a million miles away
I have to admit to just downloading this for free, mainly as I am linked in to music sharing websites through my google reader and tend to grab new things as they appear. My question, Ben, would be how did this offer come in your facebook news feed? Do you ‘like’ Sufan or someone connected to him (record label etc)? I would be tempted to purchase with this price and ease of use but I have not been offered the chance…
Someone shared the player with me… it originates from bandcamp (just share from the release page and you’ll see it). I have not ‘liked’ Sufjan on facebook or anything like that.
I’m told by Asthmatic Kitty that this method of release was a runaway success. Awesome.
Bandcamp have an interview with John from Asthmatic Kitty about releasing this EP using bandcamp. With 3 days of sales and no period to promote or preorder the release, it made it to #9 of the indie chart.
http://blog.bandcamp.com/2010/08/24/what-is-a-sufjan/
eh eh ! you discovered the power of BC
B/C has changed everything for me – AWESOME site – cool blog post
Great post Ben,
When searching online, most people aren’t neccesarily looking for what’s cheapest, they’re just looking for what’s easiest, which is why the value of conversion rate optimisation and usability is becoming increasingly important, great to see the music industry catching on to this
M