rbmaradio.com — Every bit handpicked

With our work for Red Bull Music Academy Radio we completely revamp the user experience.

Red Bull Music Academy Radio is an online radio that’s all about selection. It features today’s essential music makers and DJs, the best new tunes, and all the festival moments that really matter. With the new rbmaradio.com users can now easily browse through thousands of interviews, mixes, and live recordings that they won’t find anywhere else on the web.

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Much more than a facelift

Established in 2005, Red Bull Music Academy Radio already was in itself a fully functional model. But to attract and excite new audiences and retain existing users, the Radio had to make a big step forward. Today, our clients are competing with emerging social services where user experience defines the product — consequently, users expectations have grown.

While other similar services provide an excellent user experience, they lack the musical expertise and credibility that Red Bull Music Academy Radio can offer. With the relaunch, our objective was to bring music discovery and consumption to another level. We approached this by combining a cutting edge platform with careful curation, editing and guidance.

The new Red Bull Music Academy Radio shifts away from pursuing a linear radio model and now fully embraces the non-linearity of the web. The emphasis is put on the presentation of each individual show, and additionally shows are organized around lists. Lists are gateways to a universe of sound, from selections curated by your favorite artists to highlights from the very best clubs and festivals.

From product to service

Red Bull Music Academy Radio evolves from digital product to service: Applying responsive design techniques, we made sure that the website works on most devices. We have built the new embed player to work in any environment, providing high quality audio in one sleek, adaptable interface. A connection to music tracking service last.fm allows users to get personalized recommendations. Updates to the native iOS, Android and Windows Phone apps are in the works. Learn more about how we built the site in our technical write up.

With this relaunch, we also changed the way the Red Bull Music Academy thinks about its service and how it’s developed. We applied agile methodologies and thinking (Scrum) to allow for rapid product development, frequent changes, and early adoption of upcoming trends and standards. No longer do we aim for a “big bang” launch — we now think in small incremental releases. By focusing on the most important features first, we get to the essence sooner and are able to release much quicker. The current release is the result of only 3 months of work. Consequently, our work does not end with the launch of the site. We are now listening, learning and adapting accordingly.

Team:
Sven Ellingen (Creative Director), Michael Börner (Scrum Master), Lukas Hodel (Lead Developer), Jonathan Krause (Frontend Developer), Meral Hirsch (Designer), Marlene Schufferth (Designer), Scott Savarie (Designer), Ferdinand Salis (Frontend Developer), Oliver Zeyen (Backend Developer), Sascha Korth (Backend Developer), Steffen Schildknecht (Backend Developer), Nicolas Dillmann (Backend Developer) and, last but not least, Niklas Jansen from Red Bull Music Academy in the role of the Product Owner.