Interlude
Driving Visibility, Engagement, and Community for Emerging Music Artists
Interlude is a music-centered social media platform that I conceptualized and designed from 0 to 1. Interlude aims to foster meaningful connections between emerging artists and listeners through authentic storytelling and community-driven discovery – inviting exploration beyond what’s surfaced by mainstream platforms. We strive to transform passive listening into more impactful discovery experiences, offering artists a sustainable path to growth while empowering listeners to connect with music in a more engaging way.
Product Designer & Researcher
2 product designers, 1 engineer, 1 data scientist
Sep 2024 – May 2025
Figma, FigJam
OVERVIEW —————————————————————————————————————————————–
MY ROLE
THE TEAM
TOOLS
TIMELINE
We started this app as a group of music lovers who have seen how difficult it is for emerging artists to build their circle of listeners in today's music landscape. This shared understanding and a desire to reimagine how discovery works sparked Interlude: a project aimed at supporting emerging talent as they find the right audiences to grow with.
To begin addressing this challenge, we needed to understand the current state of the system: what's getting in the way?
We analyzed the following platforms to understand how existing products support, or fall short in supporting, emerging artists and music discovery. From this, I started identifying gaps in the emerging artist experience, specifically around visibility and community building, understanding which discovery mechanisms were more or less engaging, and pinpointing where our product could differentiate itself in the market.
We conducted a total of 19 in-depth, semi-structured user interviews with three key groups:
Listeners – to explore how they discover new music and artists, what tools and methods they rely on, and what motivates them to engage with lesser-known talent
Artists – to understand experiences promoting music, building an audience, and how current recommendation systems influence their visibility and growth
Industry stakeholders – to broaden our perspective on artist development and exposure, we spoke with a data analyst at a major streaming platform, a manager of an independent record label, and a live event coordinator at a local radio.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
ARTIST, LISTENER, AND STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS
KEY RESEARCH FINDINGS
These insights gave shape to our product vision and strategy, helping us define what needed to be built and why.
We began refining our concept by asking:
How can we help artists build deeper, more personal connections with listeners and a create a space where authentic self-expression is rewarded?
How might we leverage social features to enable a more sustainable, community-powered approach to music discovery?
What would it look like to design a recommendation system that actively supports emerging talent?
RESEARCH ——————————————————————————————————————————–––——
OUR SOLUTION ——————————————————————————————————————————–––––
A community-driven platform for discovering and connecting sustainably and authentically with rising artists.
A Community for Authentic
Artist Expression
Recommendations & Explore
Artist Profiles
Artist Create Post
Our solution is broken up into two parts:
Artists have a space to speak authentically about themselves and a community where listeners can understand their creative journey on a deeper level.
Increased Music Discovery of Smaller Artists
By delivering music to listeners through an inverse recommendation system prioritizing music from smaller artists, we make music discovery more equitable.
IMPACT —————————————————————————————————————–––––————––––––
WHAT I'VE LEARNED (SO FAR) —————————————————————————————————————–––––————––––––
As a self-defined, 0-to-1 capstone, my team is taking full ownership end-to-end - from shaping the vision to scoping features - all while balancing many moving parts. This has reinforced to me:
The importance of staying adaptable, leading through uncertainty, and keeping momentum even when things aren't fully clear yet.
People-oriented design thinking. Especially in early-stage product work, its been essential to validate decisions through ongoing user research. From the start, we involved both listeners and artists through interviews, usability testing, and feedback sessions to stay grounded in their needs and make sure we're designing a product that's actually valuable to them.
Early user testing revealed that listeners felt more connected to artists when given contextual stories alongside recommendations, suggesting strong potential for deeper engagement and more meaningful discovery moments.
How do we plan to measure success?
Increased number of streams, followers, and views for artists.
User discovery and engagement metrics (skip rates, playlist adds, saves, CTR on recs, # of new artists discovered/year).
🛠️ PROJECT IN PROGRESS… TO BE CONTINUED