# Connecting artists with the audiences who support them. Designing and building a branded music subscription app that brings listening, membership and audience insight together, giving an independent artist a direct way to serve their fans. **Client:** An independent artist with an established music catalogue **Our contribution:** Product design, UX and UI design, app development and platform integration **Delivered:** A branded subscription app, a connected artist dashboard and a recurring revenue channel ## A place to listen. A reason to return. 1. **Listen and discover** — Bring the catalogue, new releases and exclusive content into one place. 2. **Join and support** — Give fans an ongoing way to support the artist through membership. 3. **Understand and respond** — Connect subscriptions and listening behaviour to audience insight. The fan experience, subscription model and artist insight form three connected parts of the service. A loyal audience is a valuable starting point. The opportunity was to give that audience somewhere worth returning to: a place to explore the music, follow new work and support the artist through an ongoing subscription. ## An established catalogue. A more direct relationship. The artist had built an independent career and a substantial body of work. Distribution through streaming services offered reach, but limited control over the listening experience, communication with fans and income from their support. The brief brought together commercial and creative needs: make the back catalogue accessible, give new releases a home and respect a long-established visual identity. The app needed to feel like a natural extension of the artist’s work. The product question was how to turn occasional attention into a relationship people could choose to sustain. A subscription needed a clear purpose in that experience. ## Design around the reasons fans come back. We designed and built the branded app around listening and discovery, with membership providing ongoing access to the artist’s world. The music, exclusive content and new releases gave the experience its substance. UX and UI design connected the practical journey: sign in, explore the library, find something to play, save tracks and understand the subscription offer. The artist’s established design language shaped how that journey looked and felt. The catalogue served two purposes: an accessible archive for long-time listeners and a way for fans to discover work they had not heard before. Updates and native notifications provided a route back when something new was available. ## Connect the listening experience to the service behind it. The engagement brought app design and development together with the music and membership platform behind the experience. Fans encountered a coherent artist-branded service, from discovering content to supporting it through recurring subscriptions. The artist’s side of the service mattered too. A connected dashboard brought subscription activity and listening behaviour into view, making it possible to understand how people used the app after joining. - A branded fan app with sign-in and a music library - Access to the back catalogue, new releases and exclusive content - Saved tracks, artist updates and native app notifications - Recurring subscriptions connected to the listening experience - An artist dashboard with exportable audience and engagement data ## Understand the audience beyond a stream count. The dashboard exposed streams, listeners, track completion, repeat listening and comments. Together, those signals offered a more useful view of engagement than a single total. That creates practical questions for an artist: which tracks bring listeners back, where interest is concentrated and what people respond to. Downloadable data lets the team explore those questions outside the platform too. These are capabilities for understanding an audience. The published evidence does not establish that any particular insight caused an increase in subscriptions or retention. ## A working product with a reported commercial return. - **£15,013** — Reported subscription revenue - **£11,786** — Reported payment to the artist - **1,556** — Reported fans in the app - **235** — Reported paying subscribers The published case study reports £15,013 in subscription revenue and £11,786 paid to the artist within approximately fourteen months of launch. It also reports 1,556 fans in the app, 235 paying subscribers and recovery of the initial investment in approximately seven months. The result gives this project a concrete commercial dimension: an artist-branded listening experience became a paid service, alongside a direct channel for releases, communication and audience insight. These figures describe one artist’s reported results. They are historical figures from the linked case study, rather than live totals or a forecast for another artist. The source does not specify exact reporting dates or a detailed payback calculation. [Read the published artist app case study](https://insidrmusic.com/case-studies/music-subscription-app-for-artists/) Source reviewed 18 September 2026. Figures are reported by the platform and have not been independently audited for this account. Ryland’s contribution was the design and creation of the artist app, connected to the wider music subscription platform. The artist provided the music, established identity and audience relationship. ## An audience that cares. A product worth returning to. If you have an audience and an idea for a digital service, let’s work through the experience, commercial model and delivery needed to make it useful. 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