Improve music listening experience on Youtube? [Google PM Interview]

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 Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash

Interviewer: How would you increase the music listening experience on Youtube?

Shailesh: Before that, let me clarify my understanding of listening to music on Youtube. Youtube has two applications where a user can listen to music, one is normal Youtube, and the other one is launched exclusively for music called Youtube Music. People use Youtube because it is easy to search, it’s an extensive list of songs, and they can see the video. Youtube has also launched Youtube music for some subscription plans where you can download the song offline and play the song in the background. Is there any other functionality that I should be aware of for this question? 
Interviewer: No, this is good.

Shailesh: I have some questions which I want to get clarified; what platform are we talking about listening to music, Normal Youtube or listening to music on Youtube music? According to me, we should go ahead with Youtube music because, in that space, we can compete with applications like Spotify, Wynk and get the market share there as well. What do you think?
Interviewer: I think we can go ahead with Youtube Music.

Shailesh: Another question I want to ask is when we are thinking about increasing the listening experience, we are primarily focused on increasing engagement. If we increase the listening experience, then people will listen to more music on our platform. If I have to tie the objective broadly to the metric, we are looking to increase the metric like this “average time spent by a user on Youtube while listening to music”. Is my understanding correct or not?
Interviewer: Yes, go ahead with this.

Shailesh: One last question I want to ask if there are any resource or time constraints that I should be aware of?
Interviewer: You are not bound by that.

Shailesh: Okay, let me form a goal of the problem from whatever we have discussed till now. We need to increase the song listening experience in Youtube Music.
Interviewer: Go ahead.

Shailesh: The way I would like to structure the answer is. First, I will look into the user segment and prioritize it. We can think of the different use cases and pain points depending on the user journey. After that, we can think of the solutions and the success metrics to see if the solution we are proposing is working or not. At last, we can think of some future aspects or system design if time permits. Is that okay?
Interviewer: Yes, sounds good.

Shailesh: Youtube has a different user persona; I can segment the uses into three categories “Content consumers”, “Content Creators”, and “Advertisers”. Song listeners will come under content consumers, and if I have to put them into more MECE way, I will segment them into these three personas.

USER PERSONA

  1. A person who loves to discover a diverse set of songs. He is an extrovert in terms of his love for music, he feels good when people acknowledge his taste, and he also tries to express his love for the music in public.
  2. A person who is very particular about what music he is going to listen to. He doesn’t want to spoil its recommendation by listening and discovering music. He is introverted in terms of his taste for music.
  3. A person who is not very fond of music but listens while partying with many friends, acquaintances, and family. He is the occasional listener of the song.

Shailesh: I think we can target user persona #1, “the song discoverer”, because they are the ones who spend most of the time on Youtube. Solving problems for them will create a much larger impact. What do you think?
Interviewer: Okay, let’s proceed with this.

Shailesh: Now, let’s see the different use cases for user segment #1.

PAIN POINTS/USE CASES

Use Cases of the User persona #1

  1. Sometimes they get bored of all kinds of recommendations; they want to discover music in a fun way that is not yet seamlessly fulfilled by Youtube Music.
  2. Listening to music in a group is also painful on Youtube.
  3. Music plays an important role in our lives; sometimes, we want to express ourselves in some musical way or our mood in that way. Currently, there is a broken experience of putting the story on Instagram, sending song snippets in chat etc.

PRIORITISATION OF PAIN POINTS

Shailesh: Okay, now let me prioritise the pain points depending on the intensity of grievance, or we can also think of the frequency of pain points if that is applicable here. So that we have looked to the complete breadth and depth of the pain points, is that okay?
Interviewer: Yes, go ahead.

Shailesh: I think the pain point #1, discovery of the music, is a big problem that occurs whenever we think of listening to music. I would like to solve this problem first. What do you think?
Interviewer: Yes, that’s the first step for listening to the song.

Shailesh: Now let’s look for the solution to pain point #1

The solution to pain point #1

  1. Youtube Mobile can have features like “Song Geofencing,” where you can discover the song being played in your locality via GPS. You just need to shake your phone or spin a wheel, and you will have recommendations of the songs being played in your surrounding.[High Effort][High Impact]
  2. Youtube hasn’t leveraged the full potential of followers and following. Youtube Mobile can have features like “Youtube Social”, in which you can express your opinion about songs and share it with your followers; in this way, you will be able to discover the song in a much more fun way.[High Effort][High Impact]
  3. Youtube Mobile can have features like “Youtube Listen AI”, which is a kind of Alexa of Youtube, and you need to tell about what kind of music you want to listen to and what mood are you in right now; depending on that, it will be suggesting you a personalized list of songs.[Medium Effort][High Impact]

Shailesh: Now, let’s prioritise the solutions; I would like to weigh the solutions depending on the effort required, the impact made, and our overall problem goal. All the solutions above can create a high impact, but solution #3 requires less effort because Google already has a voice assistant that can be integrated into Youtube.

SUCCESS METRICS

Shailesh: Let’s see some of the success metrics for the solution.

  1. Increase in the average number of songs listened to per day per user.
  2. Average voice hours per day by “Youtube Listen AI”.
  3. The ratio of songs skipped or stopped within 30 seconds of playing to the total number of songs recommended by “Youtube Listen AI.”

-- Technomanagers

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