Music
See what the world around you is listening to.
The Problem
Music is an incredibly social medium. All of the world's biggest gatherings center around music and experiencing it with thousands of other people. How is it then that Spotify, the world's largest music platform, is so incredibly unsocial? How could we solve this?
Ideation
One thing was clear to me immediately; Spotify should not be a social media app in the way that TikTok and Reels are. Spotify needs to stay focused on the music and improving how it facilitates the social aspect of listening and sharing music.
There were three points of inspiration that led to the inception of Radar:
Take a walk. Take a walk literally anywhere and what do you see? Everybody has headphones in. Everybody has tiny set of speakers in their ears transmitting some kind of audio directly into their eardrums. Don't you want to know what they're listening to?
I'm not the only one who's had this revelation and curiosity. An extremely popular video format on all social media sites is asking random people on the street what they are listening to. The popularity of these videos was all the proof I needed that people have a desire and interest in what others around them are listening to.
One of my biggest inspirations in product design is Soren Iverson. I'm almost positive that you've seen some of his work online, but if not, the best way to explain his work is that he takes an almost fantastical and hyperbolic approach to feature concepts. I fell in love with his work because it showed me an alternative world where I asked myself, "What if this actually was real? Why can't we make our products more fun just for the sake of it?"
The Solution
With these three points in mind; the solution came to me as clear as day. What if I actually could see what the world around me was listening to? Why does my natural curiosity have to be constrained and only fulfilled by occasional videos online? From this, Radar was born.
Spotify Radar allows users to see what the world around them is listening to through a literal radar-like interface. Users are able to see not only friends, but strangers in their vicinity. They can view what songs people are listening to, view profiles, and even join open sessions and listen along.