As part of the D&AD New Blood Awards, I was tasked with making the Spotify listening experience on the app a more sociable experience, and to create a feature in Spotify that helps people easily share their content on and off the app. My research found that 46% of black, Caribbean, and African households are living in poverty, and artists from low-income areas are struggling to make a name for themselves without the funds needed for music equipment and studio time - not to mention the funds needed to market themselves.

Spotify OneTake is a new feature in Spotify that helps to tackle this issue, by allowing users to record their own freestyles, clash with other users, discuss relevant social issues and perform live in front of an online audience, in the hopes of making a name for themselves. All you need is your phone and the Spotify app – no expensive equipment needed.

Choosing a name was quite simple. The feature is tailored to a specific genre of music, a genre of music that encourages freestyles; the genre of Hip Hop and Rap. Within hip hop culture and “clash” culture, a phrase is frequently coined to describe the act of performing a song, or a verse, in “one take”, without stopping. Being able to do this is highly respected and therefore artists make the effort to let their fans know when a song was done in “one take”. The feature I created is all about performing freestyles in “one take” as you are not able to cut/edit your voice notes. This is intentional to make OneTakes more valuable, and to prove to listeners that there is definitely a level of skill in OneTakes that are not required for normal songs that are produced in studios. The name “OneTake” accurately gives artists that stamp of approval which listeners will instantly recognise. The logo simply connotes the audio levels of a voice note. As OneTakes are nothing more than a feature within the Spotify app, I didn’t want the logo to take away from Spotify’s current branding and logo. For that reason it needed to be simple and clearly communicate the purpose of the feature. The logo also matches Spotify’s current friendly branding with the use of rounded corners.

An integral part of hip hop that has started to die in recent years due to the rise of streaming services and social media is clash culture. Underground artists would battle it out round-for-round, performing freestyles against each other with witty digs and smart word-play. OneTake allows users to do this online, using the Spotify app. How it works is a user can visit another user’s profile, tap “Let’s Clash” and begin to record their first OneTake. Once a user sends their initial OneTake, the challenged user has the option to respond, or ignore. If they choose to respond, a clash playlist is automatically created. All OneTakes from the clash will live in the playlist, and listeners are able to listen and react to each OneTake. The total amount of reactions each artist gets during the clash is shown on either side of the clash playlist artwork. This acts as further incentive for artists, and confirmation on who the audience thinks won the clash/battle.

Users are able to write their bars in the in-app lyric pad, and then organise projects by colour. These lyrics will then playback to them on screen for the most seamless and convenient freestyle session. When writing a new verse, the lyrics are split into bars, with 4 bars for each section. Research revealed that this was the industry standard way of writing bars in the hip hop industry as each bar equates to a quarter note; 4 quarters making a full note. Seeing as the OneTake feature is targeted at undiscovered artists, I believe that teaching industry-standard practices within the OneTake services is important. Users are also able to run a soundtrack in the background when writing their lyrics so they can get a good idea of how their OneTake will sound. A green indicator will move down the screen as the song plays, giving the user an accurate representation of how the bars match up to the beat. Easy controls such as pause and stop are also at the bottom of the screen giving the user convenient control over the soundtrack.

Another important part of OneTake is the ability to organise live digital events within the Spotify app. The pandemic has revealed the importance of being able to connect and experience the magic of events, even if we aren’t all in the same place. Live events in the Spotify app ables listeners and artists to do exactly that. Anyone is able to host an event and is given an exclusive link that anyone can use to attend the event. Similar to the Clubhouse app, the audience lives at the bottom half of the screen, whereas the performers live at the top of the screen. The performers will take turns performing, and users are able to clap after each performance – as a subtle way of bringing the physical experience to the online world. The audience can also react using the 3 original reactions. Another interesting feature within live events is the ability to “raise your hand” by tapping the hand icon, which a user can do if they want to perform next. The host then has the choice to let you perform next. This brings endless opportunities to undiscovered talent. Influencers such as Charlie Sloth can easily start an event with hundreds of people listening. He is then able to let members of the audience take their turns in performing– giving these artists more exposure.

When researching, I found that Spotify users believe brands should take a more active role in society. Because of this, I wanted Spotify to reward artists for their efforts in discussing social issues within their OneTakes. This is where Topic Spotlights come in. Spotify will host Topic Spotlights every month centred around relevant social issues. Artists who produce OneTakes centred around these topics have the chance of getting featured in the playlist. These playlists live on the discovery page for all Spotify users, which gives artists an incentive to make OneTakes surrounding these topics. This allows for much needed conversations to be actively occurring both on and off the Spotify app. Artists must remember to add the relating hashtag in the topic hashtag box when filling in their OneTake details if they want a chance to be featured.

(Early UI sketches)