The User Experience when downloading music from an online music store like iTunes or Amazon MP3 Store is important, but there is also other important part that is often forgotten. The quality of the downloaded product.
The times when you had to browse a retailer “offline” store looking for music is long over. Now is possible to buy music online at a decent quality. But the old CDs have the Album Art and other cool stuff to increase the quality of the product, resulting in a pleasant User Experience.
With downloaded music, you lose part of these related materials. Almost everybody that offer music to download online forget about it. But with a little bit of common sense the downloaded music can be also an enjoyable experience.
The first issues that bother customers of online music stores are the identifiers, tags and metadata embedded on the downloaded files. The present Standard is ID3.
In the ID3 metadata can be embedded information like: Song Title, Artist, Album, etc. These ones are the most common, but there is other metadata that make the downloaded music more enjoyable, like: Artwork and Lyrics, these two are the most forgotten.
One good example of good practice a great User Experience for downloaded music is the Albums Ghost I-V and The Slip from Nine Inch Nails. On these products, the use of metadata to increase the final User Experience is just unbeatable: including several Artworks, the lyrics and comments related to every song, also a companion PDF file with the Album Artwork to print.
Why is this important Again?
Any step to increase the final User Experience of your products is reflected in the perception of the customer, and they are certainly willing to recommend the products to their friends. Increasing, of course, the distribution and reach of such products; using the best way possible: Word of Mouth.
Almost all decent Media Player today are designed to display this metadata in a nice way, so the user can enjoy their media with a better Experience. Saving the user of typing and filling this metadata on a product they already bought is nice step on the right direction.
If you are distributing downloadable media online, try to make the Final User Experience enjoyable. Cause the customers may be more time interacting with the downloaded files than with your distribution channel/website/store.
