June 2021
MyMusicSheet is a music platform that lets music performers sell their music sheets online, helping them continue their careers beyond offline performances.
Even though the monthly new artist registration rates have grown by 130%, the new sheet music upload rates have decreased by 10%. To solve this, I tried to find the friction point of the funnel of the sheet music upload through the artist inquiry channels.
PROBLEM
The hassle of searching and writing copyright info all by themselves.
If the sale request was rejected due to incorrect info, it had to write down copyright info from the beginning.
The artist can not sell sheet music if copyright associations have not managed the song yet.
For an artist to sell sheet music, like the table shown, they have to search and enter all of the copyright information by themselves. There were about 10-20 inquiries per day about entering sheet music copyright information.
Many sheet music sale requests have been rejected because the information, from the type of copyright to the copyright number, is scattered across different web pages, making it hard to enter valid information.
Difficulty
Select the type of copyright for the sheet music if it is self-composed or public domain.
Select the copyright association that manages the sheet music
Search the copyright number on the copyright association web page.
If the artist sells medley sheet music containing multiple songs, they have to enter all the copyright information above, one by one.
If they wanted to sell medley music sheets, they had to enter all the above copyright information one by one. In case the song is not managed by the copyright association yet, the artist can not sell the music sheets until the association manages that song.
Searching for and entering all the copyright information outside of the platform was a major friction point when uploading sheet music.
I found the ISWC, International Standard Musical Work Code, on the copyright fee report chart that the account team sent to the copyright association. This code ensures the identification and tracking of musical works across the copyright association databases.
I suggested using ISWC as a new way of entering the copyright information, by making song tags on top of the ISWC code.
This new way of entering copyright information made it possible to group all the music sheet by song tags. By making higher levels of song tags such as music genre, theme, original artist, etc, the tag system showed a new way of music sheet curating.
VALUE FIRST APPROACH
Artists can start selling the sheet music before entering the copyright information.
As a result, artists don't have to search and enter the copyright information of music sheet.
Improved the monthly sheet music upload amount by 36%.
Before improvement, about 1,900 pieces of music sheets were uploaded per month. After improvement, about 2,600 pieces of music sheets have been uploaded.
The number of artist inquiries about entering copyright info has decreased by 65%, averaging less than 5 per day.
Artists do not have to search for information on copyright association web pages.
Unlike before, artists no longer have to enter all the copyright information manually, so invalid sales requests have decreased dramatically.
Thanks to the temporary consent policy, able to sell before entering all the copyright info, artists do not have to wait for sales approval.