Ziggy Marley Music Mixer app

App Wagon 2009 - 2010

Music Composition, Music Direction, User Experience

Objective: Leverage emerging iPhone technology to create a new, engaging music product, that is extensible for various artists and genres. The innovative application should drive user interaction with an artist’s fans, attract new audiences and boost album sales.

Requirements: Design and develop a music playback mobile app that engages users by allowing them to remix their favorite artists’ tracks. As a zero-to-one app, everything must be concepted, prototyped, and developed for the first time. Create the user experience for the product, leverage accelerometer and other native iOS functions that can aid in the engagement of the app. Create a scalable framework for interaction and music stems to ensure users “never get a bad song”. The UI and visual design should reflect the genre of the music, artist, and skeuomorphic boom box style. Work with the artist at their studio to direct and supervise music production, to ensure vocal tracks can work within the development constraints. Compose original music in the genre and style of the featured artist that would be flexible to work within app development constraints.

Results:  Successfully launched app, which was well received by fans and music industry as a novel way to bridge emerging technology and music in a new format of distribution. Pioneered a unique development platform that would enable various artist and genres to be played back through the platform.

Song play mode

Each new song offers an average of 50 interchangeable components, including drums, melodies, bass lines, and vocal parts, allowing for more than hundreds of thousands of unique mix combinations. This ensures that every user experience is distinct, with endless possibilities for remixing tracks.

Ziggy Marley Music Mixer app song play flow

Random song play mode

Tapping “DJ 4 Me”engaged the app into a selecting a song and playing back all of the parts in a random sequence.

Ziggy Marley Music Mixer app random song play mode

Product demo

The Ziggy Marley app turns mobile users into music producers, offering tools to mix tracks, break beats, and create dub sounds. With features like the “Jackpot Mix,” users can shake their iPhone or iPod Touch to randomly remix song parts, resulting in unexpected and creative mixes. New tracks will continually be added through in-app purchases, keeping the experience fresh and engaging.

Ziggy and Moxie in the studio

2009 - Recording session with Ziggy at JASIC studios.

If you would like to learn more about any of the work shown, or see more in-depth examples, please email me.