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Amazon BPM
BPM = beats per minute | Amazon BPM = benefits per music
🏆 “Epic Score Design Award” 🏆
TOP 3 Winner of Amazon Music Design Challenge 2025
Gamification Solution to Music Discovery Pain Points & Increasing Customer Retention
Impact Goals:
Differentiate Amazon Music from market competitors
Retain Amazon Music customers long-term & increase DAU
Help users engage with music in new, fun, & immersive ways
My Role:
Ideate gamification system
Prototype interactions
Design UI assets & icons
Motion animate interface
Tools:
Figma, FigJam
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Team:
3 UX Designers (Me)
1 UI Artist (Me)
Timeline:
Design Challenge Sprint
4 weeks (Feb 2025 – Mar 2025)
Design Overview
By playing games and earning points to raise their Amazon BPM and/or Artist BPM Levels, users can win Amazon Music-exclusive rewards!
Every Amazon Music user starts at Amazon BPM Level 1 and through their usual music-listening habits and playing games, they can earn points to level-up. At the same time, users can optionally level-up each of their favorite artists’ Artist BPM Levels through artist community-related activities and games.
Game 1:
Lyric Me This
Users can select an artist they want to quiz their lyrics knowledge in. Win points by selecting the correct lyrics that fill in the blank.
Try turning your audio on! 😉
Game 2:
Vibe-Check a Song
Listeners will be asked to ‘vibe-check’ a song based on listening to a snippet from a randomly-chosen song, and sorting it into an ‘unhinged’ playlist.
Try turning your audio on! 😉
Every time you unlock a new BPM Level...
...you will earn tokens called ‘Beats’!
Rewards Shop & Badges
Use ‘Beats’ to redeem a variety of prizes in the Rewards Shop! From collectible artist badges to merchandise & apparel—and even concert tickets—there are a variety of attractive prizes for users who want to show off their love for their favorite artists and music!
Problem & Research
Users don’t feel incentivized enough to stay with Amazon Music and are frustrated with current music listening & discovery experiences
Amazon Music: Seeks a User Experience strategy to improve retention across its tiered offerings.
"We’re seeking a customer experience strategy that keeps users active month-after-month."
"We want a differentiating strategy that takes the future of Amazon Music beyond just music."
"Encourage subscription tier upgrades without alienating users at lower tiers."
*From Amazon Music's design challenge prompt
Music-Streaming Users: Want new interactions beyond simple music listening & finding habits!
"I’ve never thought about using Amazon Music. How is it any different from other music apps?"
"I wish there were more social aspects. I like listening to the same songs as my friends!"
"My algorithm is always recommending the same few songs & artists, it feels repetitive!"
*From 28 user interviews and survey responses
How might we innovate new ways to help young music listeners discover & engage with music in order to increase customer retention on Amazon Music?
Brainstorm & Ideation
Our Answer: Create a level-up system in Amazon Music to gamify & reward listeners for discovering and engaging with the music & artists they love!
We chose to introduce a gamification system in Amazon Music because:
1. User Retention - Incentivize long-term engagement with high-value rewards earned by playing games
2. Solves Music Discovery Pain Points - Two different types of games helps users discover new music in innovative, fun, & creative ways
3. Differentiate Amazon Music - Amazon Music would be the first in their market to introduce music-related games on their platform
Our Design Goal:
Create a differentiating feature so strongly engaging & personalized to the user’s listening habits, so that the user is de-incentivized from switching to a different platform.
We came up with a duo (i.e. “Amazon BPM” & “Artist BPM”) level-up system to cater to both of our 2 customer personas:
1. Casual listeners can freely level-up any “Artist BPM” of their choice without feeling pressured.
2. Avid fans who want to show-off their love for their favorite artists can still be rewarded for their efforts at the same time!
This duo-leveling system is successfully used in many popular games like “Pokemon” or “Genshin Impact” where the player can freely choose to level-up their favorite characters of choice. The games themselves were inspired by people’s love (and daily commitment) for short, trivia-like games such as playing The New York Times’ “Crossword” & “Wordle”, playing LinkedIn’s daily “Games”, and maintaining a Duolingo “streak”. By creating similar games themed around music discovery & engagement, we hope users will also love and play “Vibe-Check” and “Lyric Me This” on a daily basis too!
Sketches & Wireframes
I created sketches for the game "Lyric Me This" and the Amazon Music user profile customization and collectible badges. Designs were built upon the current Amazon Music design system and interface, but I decided to incorporate more motion animations to the game screens to enhance users' sense of delight and visual engagement. I designed the badges and other icons based on vinyl records and CDs to mimic the idea of collecting music CDs from your favorite artists.
User Testing & Feedback
Iterating Designs based on Player Testing
Player testing was conducted with 6 different individuals who are current music-streaming-service users across different platforms. Users tested the 2 games we created and gave feedback based on how enjoyable/fun the games were, how incentive the rewards are, and how often would they engage with Amazon Music and the BPM gamification system.
Game 1: Lyric Me This
Quiz your lyrics knowledge from your favorite artists! A random song by the artist will be playing, helping users actively listen to and discover new songs by artists they already like!
Lo-fi (before)
Hi-fi (after)
✨73% of surveyed users find new music by looking up other songs by artists they already like
✨ 59% of users say lyrics are their favorite part!
Game 2: Vibe-Check a Song
Create fun, unhinged playlists purely on vibes by sampling new songs! Since the song will be playing in the background while user is making a decision, this helps users to discover new songs by actively listening.
Lo-fi (before)
Hi-fi (after)
✨ 45% of listeners said they love to try a sample & listen to a snippet before committing & adding a song into a playlist
Rewards Shop & Badges
With the incentive of high-value rewards earned by playing games and AM account progression & customization, users are motivated to stick with Amazon Music and continue engaging with the music they love on the app month-after-month.
Hi-fi collectible profile badges
Hi-fi Rewards shop
😎 “As a fan, I feel like I’m actually supporting their career in a meaningful way.” - Long-time music streaming user
🤩 “These badges are so cute! I really like that I can make my profile feel more like for me and my favorite music!” - Current AM user
Interactive Prototype
Amazon BPM:
A Gamification Solution to Music Discovery Pain Points & Increasing Customer Retention
Try out the interactive prototype!
Make sure your audio is on 😉
Takeaways
Don’t be afraid to wander off the beaten path! — As designers, we are always thinking of the future, both near and far. It’s so important to think with an innovative mind and push back against the boundaries of what we think we already know and what we think is considered ‘rationale’ and ‘safe’. The ideation process from this project really challenged me to find inspiration and create something that has never been done before in this market space.
Don’t stop at pain points, understand the hidden human psychology! — From our user research, we found that although users shared common pain points, they still choose to not switch to another music platform (hence, user is successfully retained). We agreed to not just simply stop there, but dive into what is causing and why are users being successfully retained to their current music-streaming platform. By understanding the underlying rationale for our users’ decision-making, we were able to conceptualize a solution that more effectively targets the root factor behind increasing user retention.
Thank you to my Team C³ members: Chloe & Charlene for working together with me on this incredibly fun gamification system! I couldn’t have done this without clashing our creative minds to birth 9 unique ideas (and then narrowing them down to our chosen winner)! Special thank you to Samantha & Alexis from Amazon Music for serving as our team’s mentors and advising us throughout this challenge!