Merlin Network

Overview

Merlin is a digital rights agency that represents independent music labels, facilitating licensing deals with digital service providers (DSPs). I led the following projects:

• Avalon: Redesign of their internal web app to streamline business processes such as deal management with DSPs, generating revenue reports, and tracking invoices and payments.
• Wizard: Overhaul of the B2C platform for music artists to manage their DSP deals, view revenue reports, view invoices, and monitor payments.
• The Bridge: Designed a B2B web app for music labels to validate music packages before uploading to DSPs.

The Challenge

Both internal management system and B2C platforms were outdated, suffering from slow performance, disorganised data, and confusing workflows. These inefficiencies affected Merlin’s internal teams (B2B) and external users like artists and labels (B2C), limiting their ability to manage accounts, deals, and content validation. The project aimed to address these challenges by enhancing workflow efficiency, improving performance, and elevating the overall user experience, while also enabling music labels to seamlessly upload and validate content to DSPs.

The Process

Phase 1: Avalon (Internal Web App Redesign):

• Workshops: Conducted workshops and empathy sessions with internal teams to understand their pain points and curent working flows.
• Redesign: Focused on improving site architecture and streamlining workflows for membership, reporting, and invoicing.
• Prototyping & Testing: Created wireframes in InVision and tested them with key stakeholders. This process iterated into a high-fidelity design that simplified internal team tasks by 60% and improved performance by 80%.

Phase 2: The Wizard (B2C External App):

• Workshops: Worked with artists and labels to redesign the B2C interface for managing music uploads, contracts, and DSP deals.
• Solution: Created a flow that simplified complex workflows into step-by-step processes for artists, enhancing usability.
• Testing: Prototypes were tested and refined based on feedback from users, ensuring a smooth B2C experience. Phase 3:

The Bridge (B2B Web App):

• Workshops & Prototypes: Collaborated with external music labels to improve content validation workflows and streamline communication between labels and DSPs.
• Automation: Integrated “The Bridge” tool to automate content validation, reducing manual workload for labels.

The Outcome

• Phase 1 (Avalon intenal web app): Increased internal team efficiency by 60% and improved app performance by 80%.
• Phase 2 (Wizard B2C): Enhanced external app speed by 54%, boosted user engagement by 30%, and improved user retention by 40%. The B2C “Wizard” streamlined artist workflows and improved user satisfaction significantly.
• Phase 3 (The Bridge, B2b music validation tool): The Bridge redesign improved efficiency and reduced errors in the music upload process, leading to faster submission times and higher satisfaction among music labels.