Re-mixing a classic
By willbloor 12 Apr 2011.
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The NOW! Music website was re-launched yesterday, and it was designed and built by The Team. We’re pretty pleased with the output, so we thought we might outline how we see the music industry evolving, and how this thinking went into the redesign.
With over 27 years of experience and 100 million albums sold, NOW! Music has collated music simply based on what we buy without agenda, without bias, without kowtowing to coolness. From Crazy Frog to Thriller, Dizzee Rascal to Duran Duran – NOW! Music has been acting as our audio anthologists. We like to think of them as the National Trust of our shared pop music pasts.
And when Woolworths closed in 2008 a significant route to market closed with it. The pick-and-mix favourite was a spiritual home for a brash, fun compilation brand that fitted well with its generally non-tech-savvy, non-download audience. With the emergence of new and more effective means of downloading music becoming commonplace, NOW! Music had the challenge of how to encourage a traditionally physical CD-focused fanbase to start downloading, in some cases for the first time - a terrifying experience for some.
The key here was usability. The tool had to be incredibly simple to use - not just in terms of selecting tracks, but also completing the journey through the checkout, onto your MP3 player and - in some cases - onto a burned CD. For us this was a tricky part of the journey, given that our expertise is mostly focused on the web rather than things like CD burners.
However, the key principles of usability stood us in fairly good stead. We went through various stages of designing, testing, finessing and testing again. However, we remain open to ideas and would love feedback on how it can be improved - especially from those who aren’t used to downloading music.
But what about the business model? With iTunes owning a healthy share of the legal download market, and players such as Amazon, HMV and Play.com with a healthy stake in the rest, it is a bold and brave move to enter this market. Where Apple has full control of their platform, and Amazon has a substantial market reach, it may seem an insurmountable task. But iTunes, Amazon and Play.com have a weakness: where iTunes is an icon, NOW! Music is a brand, with all the emotional trimmings.
While we can’t compete with Apple in terms of the end to end ecosystem, what we can do is make it more fun and enjoyable to build compilations, and then really easy to download and play them - a true branded experience. NOW! Music already has a place in your heart whether you bought their last album or not. When you find an old NOW! album there is a sense of nostalgia.
With Nowmusic.com we have made a website that leverages all the nostalgia, history and heritage of a much-loved brand and places it in the hands of the user. Loaded with rich, juicy interactions, and a bright, bold design. The Team has create one of the easiest ways of building a compilation. Try it for yourself at www.nowmusic.com - hope you like it!
