Amazon Music
From first listen to lasting loyalty
A customer experience strategy to help overlooked Prime users discover, understand, and stay with Amazon Music.
The problem wasn’t access. It was the first impression.
ROLE
Product design
Interaction design
AI-assisted prototyping
TIMELINE
3 weeks
FOCUS
Discovery
Onboarding, Personalisation
Retention
METHODS
Survey, competitive audit,
journey mapping, prototyping
and user testing
The Problem
Prime users had access. They still weren’t listening.
Our research showed a gap between Amazon’s ecosystem advantage and Amazon Music adoption.
Many users already had Prime, but that didn’t translate into music usage. The app was either invisible, confusing, or dismissed before users reached a meaningful first listen.
Key signals from research:
Core Insight
The onboarding was asking the wrong question.
Most music apps ask users to pick artists.
But people don’t like everything by an artist. They like specific songs, moods, eras, and energy.
That made artist selection a blunt signal. It gave the algorithm weak input, which led to generic recommendations and early drop-off.
The first session had to prove: “this app gets me.”
Design Tenets
Four rules shaped the solution
Key Solutions
Three moves to fix the first-use experience
01 - Refined onboarding
We redesigned onboarding around taste capture instead of generic artist selection.
02 - Library Import
Users could bring playlists from Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube Music so Amazon Music felt familiar immediately.
03 - Party Play
A social music feature designed to turn group listening into word-of-mouth acquisition.
Together, these moved Amazon Music from “another streaming app” to an experience that starts personal and becomes social.
Testing the Onboarding
We tested three ways to capture taste.
We created three onboarding approaches:
A - Pick Your Favourites
Users selected specific songs after choosing artists.
B - Snippet Swipes
Users swiped through short music snippets to express gut-level taste.
C - Build Your First Jam
Users picked a seed song to generate a personalised station.
We tested all three with 6 participants, using randomised order and moderated think-aloud sessions. Snippet Swipes won because it felt intuitive, fast, and more personal. It scored highest on personalisation and return intent.
Final Experience & Retention Loop
A first listen that becomes a reason to return
The final experience gives users two ways to start with Amazon Music:
Import your music
Bring playlists from existing streaming apps so Amazon Music feels familiar from the first session.
Start fresh
Swipe through short song snippets so the app learns taste at the song level, not just the artist level.
Both paths lead to a personalised home: My Soundtrack.
From there, the experience extends into Party Play, a social listening feature that gives users a reason to bring friends into Amazon Music.
The retention loop is simple:
Personalised first listen → social listening moment → friends join → music discovery → app download/import → return for the next group session
This turns onboarding from a one-time setup into a growth loop. Acquisition doesn’t feel like marketing. It feels like play.
Reflection
What I’d take forward
The hardest part wasn’t adding more ways to discover music. It was making the first session feel personal enough to earn a second one.
Amazon Music already had the content, the ecosystem, and the Prime audience. The challenge was helping users feel understood before they dismissed it as “just another music app.”
The goal wasn’t more onboarding. It was a faster moment of trust.
