Under Construction
Helping Customers Pay Their People
Client
The Orchard / Sony Music
Deliverable
Prototype & Design Comps, Research Design & Reporting
Role
Lead Product Designer
Tools & Software
Figma, Miro, Survey Monkey
Problem
We needed a solution for our customers to pay those who worked for them.
Goal
Create a tool that increases customer satisfaction.
Situation
The Orchard wants to keep customers, and created a three pronged approach for doing so:
Provide better business intelligence
Provide better tools for managing content
Accounting tools that set us apart from competitors
I was part of a team that worked on the accounting tools.Artists now want direct relationships with large scale music distributors like The Orchard, and all parties involved want more transparency—especially when it comes to money.
Service Provider to Service Bank
The Orchard is owned by Sony Music and the partnership has moved past just providing a distribution service.
The Orchard can now act more as a bank and hold royalties. By using technology to cut down on manual accounting, Sony can offload more accounting resources and focus on other parts of their business.
Traditionally, record labels work directly with distributors, collect all royalties and then separately pay their artists and contributors.
The Orchard as Service "Bank"
Personas
Record Label
A company, who holds rights to content, and traditionally manages accounting
Distributor
A company, who owns the pipelines that connects to streaming services, and charges a fee to use those pipes.
Customer
A company, or person, who holds right to content and is paid by the record label.
Collaborator
A person who is paid by a customer, who helped produce or promote their music.
Problem
Competitive Analysis
The Orchard is competitive in its product offering, except for one key area, which is paying out royalities.
Soliciting User Feedback
The first step in uncovering the problem was to recruit users to get more information about how they work and more specific information about their business.
Information about how much detail they need, the size of their business, how many artists they manage, what format they use for their statements, and how they currently calculate royalties.
The results of the study confirmed our problem statement, our users thought royalties were the most important.
Pain Points
We also confirmed some pain points with our users:
Record Label
Accounting is getting complex, and doesn’t provide returns. More technology is needed, and I’m not great at that.
Distributor
I can do the technology, but customers don’t know me as an authority when it comes to accounting.
Customer
We are spending too much time and money figuring out how much we are owed and who we have to pay.
Collaborator
It takes forever for me to get paid, and I’m not sure it is clear that I’m getting the right amount.
Solution
Designs
Impact
Customer Feedback
Quantitative Results
Some learnings:
#1: Adoption was lower than expected
Customers with small number of Collaborators may not need this product
Some labels pay upon receipt of invoice and don’t need batch payments
Labels have existing payment method they are happy with – reluctant to change
#2: They aren’t using the payments portion.
Confusion and time issues around process with Wise (payment processor)
Lack of understanding of funding process
Some territories not supported by Wise
