CASE STUDY
The "What's New" Hub
One Place for all the new music, features and updates
PROBLEM
New music and upcoming releases were getting lost,
Around 99,000 to 120,000 new tracks are uploaded to streaming services every single day this meant that without great curation and a dedicated discovery space, almost all new content would be completely missed by users. and,
Gaana had just gotten the licence to stream Tseries music
earlier when user searched for, or expected to find, new music from major Indian T-Series, they were met with "content not available" errors or empty search results.
This friction led to a core belief that Gaana's library was incomplete, forcing users to switch platforms (increasing churn) and fundamentally damaging trust in Gaana as their primary music source.
Gaana secured the T-Series contract, instantly closing the major content gap.
Users missed out on popular tracks
New music and tracks were buried in long scrolls and swipes
T-series Contract
Gaana secured the T-Series contract, instantly closing the major content gap. But Users still needed to discover the music.
Churn
Users left because they didn't realize the app was constantly getting better. They weren't seeing the value.
GOAL
Turn this massive content acquisition into a compelling, visible reason for old users to return and current users to understand the app's true scale, proving Gaana now has a vast variety of songs.
Signal
Tell users that new content is there on the app
Highlight
Show users the best and the most trending music, also build anticipation by showing what's coming soon.
Integrate
Newly released content to be personalised according the user's listening behaviour so that music discovery feels completed
Introducing Whats New, a hub for personalised updates on the lastest racks
This gave us the space to showcase new and upcoming music, especially by Tseries, hence subtly hinting that Tseries is there on Gaana and let the users know that Gaana is up to date with all the new stuff
A New Section
I introduced What's New as a new section with a icon button on the top right, easy for the user to notice, be curious and click.
Interstitial Banner
I wanted to grab the user's attention by a simple banner which would show up after the user logins in for the first time in the app, to let them know there's something new in the App.
The Main Screen
Simple, Fresh, and a list of 20 personally curated new song suggestions for the user based on their listening behaviour.
Reminders
Coming Soon had an entire space for itself within the screen, where the users can see whats coming, as well as get reminders for the same.
Empty States are Important.
Not every time the user may see new or popular, based on their personal preferences. This may happen if the user's preferred language doesn't have any new songs yet.
Homepage Banner
To give a gist of what's new and upcoming I also introduced a hompage banner where the users could see the thumbnails of new/upcoming albums, songs etc
Prototype
During this time, we were also releasing new features in Gaana, and
This gave me an idea;
to showcase new features in the What's New tab as well.
the stakeholders liked the idea, and this boosted few of the most exciting features on our apps such as Import Playlists.
What's new was now not just a space to discover new music, but also new exciting stuff within the app as well and since Users were already trained to look there for new value, it made sense to put it there.
Why was it important to the business ?
With the introduction of features like playlist importing from other music apps, this space quickly became a crucial point of contact for demonstrating that new, valuable functionality to our users.
Each New feature had a redirection CTA to take the user to that particular feature.
Small GIFs on how the feature functions added more context to the banner.
IMPACT
The Impact
This subtle but strategic UX fix transformed our activation rates, proving that removing friction is the fastest way to drive engagement.
+40%
Content Discovery
More users were discovering new content based on their personal taste while maintaining the original discovery metrics
+28%
Lift in usage of new features
More users started exploring new features
Learnings
Highlight the unique
New and exciting things deserve a separate space to catch the eye of the viewer and make them curious to engage with it.
Contextual Reassurance
We first showed the newly released T-series songs in the Hub, this straightaway gathered the users attention and helped Gaana close the content credibility gap above anything else.
Leveraging the high traffic space
By leveraging the high traffic space of What's New, we were also give the users an unexpected value by also showcasing the new features Gaana launched.