YouTube Music Artist Recap
Sharing brag-worthy stats and celebrating Artists’ year in music 🎉
Role
Design Lead
Date
2023
Challenge
YouTube Music Recap is a YouTube wide campaign reaching over 1 billion users. Recap provides a look back on your year in music and aims to be part of a broader cultural moment. Artist Recap is a key part of YouTube’s strategy to generate more organic conversations about the product and artist performance. At the same time, Spotify has Artists’ attention.
Solution
Provide a way for Artists to engage with their fans by showcasing and celebrating their YouTube success in a way that leads fans to engage with YouTube Music and drive awareness for YouTube Recap as a whole.
The Context
2023 Recap
YouTube Music Recap is a YouTube wide campaign which reaches over 1 billion users. Similarly to competitors, Recap provides a look back on your year in music and aims to be part of a broader cultural moment.
2023 Artist Recap
Artist Recap is a key part of YouTube’s strategy to generate more organic conversations about the product and artist performance. At the same time, Spotify has Artists’ attention.
In 2022, YouTube Music delivered Artist Recap via email —showing positive results, but with a lot of room to improve.
Artist Recap Goal:
Provide a way for artists to engage with their fans by showcasing and celebrating their YouTube success in a way that leads fans to engage with YouTube Music and drive awareness for YouTube Recap as a whole.
The Opportunity
Just scratching the surface
Spotify Wrapped has been extremely successful, but given the huge reach of YouTube, there is an even greater opportunity. Learnings from the previous year showed that virality of Recap is tied to how Artist Recaps are scaled and improved.
Leveraging Analytics Data Stories
YouTube’s Creator Analytics team has launched weekly and monthly creator recaps for a broad set of creators in the form of data stories (visual, bite-sized story panels that make consuming data/analytics insights digestible, comprehendible, and delightful.
I decided to leverage the framework and delivery mechanism to creating a suite of regular Artist-specific recaps/roundups—of which, this yearly Artist Recap is a cornerstone.
Why move to data stories?
Better reach with artist teams vs. emails (opt-in’s/incorrect emails). Last year’s email: ~160K eligible artists notified
With Artist Recap data story: ~600K artistsMobile format makes consuming and sharing to socials easier
Better data quality experience for artists
Integrated product experience (keeps them coming back for personalized insights long-term)
Design Principles
01
Sharing is critical to Artist Recap
Sharing is a critical need for Artists to share their recap with their fans in a way that can lead fans to engage with and subscribe to YouTube Music.
Sharing by influential artists is also critical to building the cultural moment.
02
Consistency with Recap Brand
Remaining consistent with look/feel of design and voice/tone of copy is important to make sure the story is well aligned within Recap branding— adding significance to the cultural moment.
03
Reach as many Artists as possible
With recaps, we aim to reach as many Artists as possible who have meaningful data to summarize.
Last year’s email: ~160K eligible artists notified
With Artist Recap data story: ~600K artists
04
Show Artists something unique
Show artists/their teams summarized and insightful insights that they cannot easily find in music analytics and in plain language.
In UXR, artists/teams said this was specifically that would be more “shareable” on socials.
05
Highlight multi-format milestones
Show highlights and milestones achieve throughout the year, specifically in multi-format performance and how fans are engaging and creating with your music on YouTube
06
Demonstrate the value of YouTube
Help Artists/teams understand the value and impact of YouTube to their overall success and optimize the ROI of the platform to capture new users of Artist Analytics.
Design Approach
Visually distinct, consistent with Recap brand
Having visual design consistency between consumer and Artist Recaps (while having distinct personalities) is integral to the success and awareness of the overall Recap campaign.
Creating a visual experience which resonates with Artists and they are excited to share is critical to the success of Recap and future data stories.
Tailored Artist experience
Artists and their teams will be able to see their own yearly stats through analytics data stories. Their experience is entirely centered around their profile image color. We will extract a color palette based on it and use it on their logo template, story panels, and share cards.
Entrypoints
Utilizing existing frameworks for maximum reach
Having visual design consistency between consumer and Artist Recaps (while having distinct personalities) is integral to the success and awareness of the overall Recap campaign.
Creating a visual experience which resonates with Artists and they are excited to share is critical to the success of Recap and future data stories.
Critical User Journey 1
As an Artist, I would like to have an at-a-glance view of my year in music on YouTube
Viewing the Artist Recap data story
Personalize the experience to the artist: Artist Recap data story panels are based on vibrant color extraction using Artist profile image on YouTube Music.
Hero stats: Content is dynamic based on data thresholds across the experience. Some panels are hidden if artist does not meet certain thresholds.
Stream time, contextualized: Put number of hours streamed into an understandable context that is understood globally and has a positive tone—meeting the artist where they are at and remaining celebratory.
Insight panels: Showcase big milestones and highlight the value of YouTube’s multi-format reach
Critical User Journey 2
As an Artist, I would like to celebrate and share my success on YouTube with my fans
Encourage artists, thanking them for their contribution to music and giving them a celebratory visual to share on social media with their fans.
Artist sharing is critical to the virality of the Recap as a whole and core to: raising product awareness of the YouTube Music app, strengthening the Recap brand, funneling fans to Artists’ music, increasing fan engagement, and consumers trying out their own Recap.
Critical User Journey 3
As an Fan, who follows an Artist on social media, I would like to learn more about the artist and discover my own Recap
Tapping on attribution link on socials will take user to the Artist’s page on the YouTube Music app if the app is installed. Once they are on the Artist page, there is an entrypoint to encourage them to try out their own Recap.
Why does this matter?
2023 marks the first year that Artist Recap exists in product as a data story inside of Artist Analytics on YouTube Studio Mobile —widening the reach to eligible artists who can see it.
In the first week after launch, daily active users (DAU) for Artist Analytics on Studio Mobile increased by 200%.
Makes it easy for artists to share Artist Recap panels to social media is key to driving virality of the overall campaign.
YouTube is strengthening its place in the music industry by outwardly sharing multi-format success to the world—inspiring new or existing artists to double down on the platform.
Provides unique and shareable insights that is just the beginning of making masses of data easier to digest and take action on.
Educates artists and their teams (who were not previously using Artist Analytics) to come back for personalized insights at-a-glance.
Partners are already requesting additional data stories that would be impactful for independent artists or artist teams.
The Outcome
“Had more fun looking through these for our Artists than my own Spotify Wrapped”
“Thanks so much! My fans love it. I hope to receive many more!”
“Thanks for the update on my music. It’s helpful to understand where I’ve been making progress in my career”
“This made me smile and believe in myself as an artist”
“This is really important for an artist 🙏”
