Designing a Social Music Platform That Connects Artists, Credits, and Fans
Ursa was a mobile platform designed to help music fans discover artists while also surfacing the people behind the music—songwriters, producers, and collaborators who are often invisible on traditional streaming platforms.
The goal was to create a product that combined music discovery, artist profiles, social engagement, and music credits into a single experience. While most platforms focused only on the artist and the track, Ursa aimed to reveal the full creative ecosystem behind every song.
Elements blended into Ursa's product vision
A look inside the platform's interface across social, credits, discovery, and events.
Streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music make it easy to listen to songs but very difficult to understand who actually created them.
The people who shape the sound remain nameless.
No way to explore who made the music they love.
Algorithms miss the human connections behind songs.
Discovery Flow
Organic music discovery through the credit network
From artist profiles to live events, every feature was designed to surface the creative network behind music.
Multi-dimensional creative identity
Each artist profile acts as a central hub surfacing music, credits, photos, videos, events, bio, artwork, lyrics, and liner notes. Rather than tab bars, the interface uses icon-based navigation to make exploration feel visual and intuitive.
This mirrors how fans actually interact with artists—jumping between media, performances, and collaborators.
Community-driven discovery
A social discovery feed where artists share photos, videos, tour announcements, and music releases. Fans interact via likes, comments, and shares—creating a community layer that traditional streaming platforms lack.
Instead of just listening, fans can participate in an artist's world.
Network graph of collaboration
Each song displays songwriter, vocalist, producer, and instrumentalists. Users can tap a contributor to explore their other work, transforming credits into a discovery engine.
Song → Producer → Other Songs → New Artists. This creates organic music discovery.
Community-driven accuracy
Creators can add or request credits through editing, searching collaborators, and submitting credit requests. This solves a major industry problem—music credits are often incomplete or inaccurate.
A community-driven credit system similar to Wikipedia or IMDb.
Digital to real-world connection
Live performance discovery through artist tour schedules, event calendars, venue information, and ticket links. Fans move from discovering a song to following an artist to attending a show.
Connecting digital discovery to real-world experiences.
Multi-disciplinary music culture
Support for music, videos, photos, artwork, and liner notes. Artwork pages highlight visual collaborators, liner notes provide deeper storytelling, and video sections capture live performances.
This reflects the multi-disciplinary nature of music culture.
The UX approach focused on reframing how people think about music—from isolated tracks to interconnected creative networks.
Instead of thinking in terms of artists and songs, the product treats music as a network of creators. Every song becomes a node connecting multiple creative contributors.
Users discover music through collaborators, credits, events, and media. This mimics how music fans actually explore culture—following threads of creative connection.
Artists are presented as creative brands, not just music files. Their full body of work, collaborations, and story come together in one place.
Artists generate many types of content—songs, videos, photos, credits, events. The challenge was building an interface that organized this complexity without overwhelming users.
Music credits involve multiple roles and relationships. The UX needed to make these roles searchable, explorable, and editable while maintaining data integrity.
The product had two major audiences—fans and creators. The design had to serve both without creating separate products or fragmenting the experience.
Creators want visibility for their work beyond the artist name.
Fans enjoy exploring the stories behind music.
Credits can become a powerful discovery engine.
This project reinforced how product strategy and UX design must evolve together when building early-stage platforms. The intersection of music, technology, and community requires constant iteration and deep empathy for both creators and fans.