APRA AMCOS
A collaborative digital experience to support music creators
The music industry can be a tricky business to navigate. Whether you’re a songwriter, composer or music publisher, it’s not enough to simply create the music – you must also deal with the world of licensing, copyright and royalties in order to be successful. But that’s where the Australasian Performing Rights Association (APRA) and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS) steps in.
APRA AMCOS exists to support music creators with a unique licensing framework and music industry support network that involves education, creators rights advocacy, awards and events.
Today, APRA AMCOS works with over 100,000 Australasian music creators to look after certain music rights on their behalf. Businesses and organisations can buy a licence from APRA AMCOS to play, perform, copy, record or make available a vast catalogue of songs. Royalties are then paid to music creators when their music is played or copied, both locally and overseas.
The APRA AMCOS team engaged us in mid-2020 to work on the development of their new website. Working in collaboration with their in-house design team, and using a foundation of existing user research and website concepts, we provided APRA AMCOS with a modern, user-centred, mobile-first site using Craft CMS.
A streamlined website that was entirely shareable and built with social media in mind
APRA AMCOS approached Evolution 7 seeking a mobile-responsive website that was clean, easy-to-navigate and clutter-free. They wanted the functionality to promote news articles, spruik upcoming events, communicate opportunities and just generally upload and share custom content – including video. In a nutshell, they wanted a streamlined website that was entirely shareable and built with social media in mind.
From an internal perspective, APRA AMCOS were also keen to move to a component-based system that would provide their content managers with the flexibility to build templates and pages with as little dependence on a developer as possible. We were happy to oblige.
Improving the processes for content managers
When APRA AMCOS enlisted our help, they were facing several key challenges, mainly around their member user experience. Their previous site was clunky to navigate and key content was difficult to locate online.
In response to this, they needed a site that provided a streamlined user experience and presented content in a clean, easy-to-locate manner, and included the functionality to use the portal as a way to report to APRA AMCOS / check in on reporting in relation to their songs and earnings.
Our aim was to identify ways to enhance the user experience and improve the processes for website admin users, by providing custom modules for some of APRA AMCOS’ key content
A clean & streamlined UX
As mentioned, it was vital that the key APRA AMCOS user groups were able to quickly and easily find relevant information online. To do this, it required in-depth information architecture development prior to design. We assisted by strengthening the UX with innovative indexing and filtering functions in key areas such as News & Articles, FAQs and site search.
Another significant priority was ensuring that the content managers at APRA AMCOS had an easy-to-use and flexible CMS. Working iteratively, we scoped the designs received from the APRA AMCOS team and then architected a component-based system that maintained brand aesthetic while still offering exceptional flexibility in landing page and article creation.