Turning Music Taste Into Product Opportunity
Project Manager & Product developer | Vinyl Circle
Sept 2024 – Mar 2025
Vinyl Circle is a social music review platform where users rate, write, and share reels-style takes on albums and tracks. Built over three phases: Alpha (Figma hi-fi prototype), Beta (development), and Final (Spotify-integrated MVP), our goal was to turn music discovery into a social experience rooted in authentic expression.
As Project Manager, I led our internal cross-functional teams, including dedicated leads for UI, UXR, Dev, and IxD, through the product cycle. My role centered on keeping the vision clear, the roadmap grounded at intersection of viable feasible desirable, and the team moving.
🛠 My Focus Areas:
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Project Direction: Scoped MVP features, led tradeoff discussions, and helped the team prioritize what mattered most to users
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Team Coordination: Facilitated sprints, retros, and design-dev syncs to maintain alignment from Alpha through MVP
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UI & Dev Support: Collaborated on UI decisions early on and provided full-stack dev support for key features like search and API integration
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Execution & Delivery: Maintained momentum across phases, helping ensure we shipped a functional, cohesive proof of concept
⚠️ Problem - we trying to slove?
Music is deeply personal, but most platforms only optimize for listening, not for expressing. Fans often want to share how a track made them feel, what an album reminded them of, or why a lyric hit hard. But existing platforms don’t offer space to do that meaningfully. There’s no lightweight, social way to talk about music the way you might rave about a movie or post a quick take on YouTube Shorts.
💡Our Insight
People express themselves in different ways some write, some talk, some love short-form video. What if there was a platform that met users where they are, offering multiple review formats that feel natural, expressive, and fun!
🏁 Goals & Milestones
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Build a Multi-Format Review Experience
Develop an interactive music review system that supports star ratings, short written reviews, and reels-style video reviews, offering users multiple expressive formats.
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Timely Milestone Delivery
Successfully complete Alpha, Beta, and Final phases on time, ensuring each release is functional and low in bugs.
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Usability-Focused MVP Development
Design and implement a working MVP that integrates Spotify's API while mocking complex features like reviews, prioritizing smooth user flows and intuitive design.
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User Feedback & Satisfaction
Conduct usability testing and aim for a 4/5 average satisfaction score, validating the product’s ease of use, clarity, and appea
Team Structure
We were a team of five, each stepping in with our own strengths, and the curiosity to grow into new ones. From research and design to dev and delivery, this project gave all of us space to lead where we felt confident and contribute where we wanted to stretch.
Here’s how our team structured and evolved our roles:
Alpha Phase – Design-Driven
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Sue (me): Project Management (Primary), UI Design (Secondary)
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Brianna: UX Research (Primary), PM Support (Secondary)
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Chem: UI Design (Primary), UX Support (Secondary)
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Ella: Content Management (Primary), UI Design (Secondary)
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Rosie: Interaction Design (Primary), Content Support (Secondary)
Post-Alpha Phase – Build Mode
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Sue (me): Project Management (Primary), Development Support (Secondary)
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Brianna: UX Research (Primary), PM Support (Secondary)
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Ella: Development (Primary), Content Support (Secondary)
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Chem: UI Design (Primary), Content Support (Secondary)
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Rosie: Interaction Design (Primary), Development Support (Secondary)
Note:
In Alpha, we focused on building a high-fidelity prototype in Figma.
In Beta, we shifted into development, layers up to bringing the MVP to life with real data and interactions.
My Role, what did I do?
As the Project Manager, I drove the process from research through delivery, scoping features, planning sprints, and facilitating communication between design, dev, and research.
But my role wasn’t just about logistics.
It was about understanding people, how they think, how they communicate, and how to make sure they feel heard, without losing sight of the product pipeline. At the end of the day, we were all working toward the same goal.
I learned to adapt conversations to the person, not just the task. I helped the team move forward, not just by organizing, but by stepping in where support was needed, from shaping UI flows in Figma to contributing during full-stack dev.
This project taught me how to lead while learning. How to create clarity. And how to support a team not just as a planner, but as a builder, too.
Product roadmap with key decisions
Each phase surfaced new signals that challenged our assumptions and led to more informed, user- and business-aligned decisions.
User-driven feature Expansion
During wireframing, our business stakeholder asked a simple but powerful question:
"Do people still prefer reading long reviews, what about videos?"
It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a prompt that made us pause. We realized we hadn’t challenged the assumption that written reviews were still the default way people shared opinions.
At the same time, our initial survey data had already shown that 42% of users discover music via social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram , a clear sign that short-form, visual content was how many users engaged with music culture.
We ran a follow-up survey asking users how they’d prefer to review music.
71.5% of respondents chose reels-style video reviews. Rather than replacing written content, we expanded our feature set to include reels, allowing users to express themselves in ways that felt natural and current.
This wasn’t just about adding video, it was about questioning defaults, validating assumptions, and giving users more expressive freedom.
App offering scope - broadens!
The original product was positioned for album reviews only assuming deeper listening experiences.
Key Product Question Asked: “Do users even listen to full albums or are we designing for an outdated use case?
How we validated it:
We ran two user surveys focused on music listening behavior. The results:
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52.2% review both songs and albums
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39.1% review songs only
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Only 8.7% review albums exclusively
What made this difficult:
Half of the team was hesitant to expand the scope, and understandably so.
Exploring flows for both track and album reviews felt like added complexity, and introduced more work at a stage where we were trying to focus and finalize. There was discomfort, uncertainty, and real fatigue.
🔍 How I navigated it
I reframed the challenge:
“It’s better to shift now than to fully build something users may not want.”
Instead of pushing a decision, I encouraged us to validate it. I brought the data into the conversation and reframed the shift, not as a derailment or personal preferences but follow the data, as a strategic expansion aligned with real user behavior. Once we saw the results, the team aligned around a broader offering that made space for how people actually listen and review music. We updated our flows with that in mind.
A personal "Product Sense Takeaway" for me here:
As PM, part of the job isn’t just making the right call, it’s helping the team feel safe enough to pivot when it matters most.
UX Ambiguity Through Targeted A/B Testing
As we moved into our high-fidelity phase, we ran into a classic product challenge:
Several designs made sense internally, but we weren’t sure what would make the most sense to the user.
We needed a way to visually indicate that a track had already been reviewed. Multiple UI options were on the table each with its own color, icon, and tone. But with that came different interpretations:
- "Did it conflict with the star rating system?"
- " Did it feel like a confirmation or an error?"
Simple next step: turn this design ambiguity into a quick A/B test!
53.8% of users chose Option C, calling it “clear” and “reassuring.” It looked like a confirmation not a warning and stood apart from the star rating system.
Another key learning for me :
As PMs, we’re often deciding what’s “worth testing.” This was a low-effort test with high user-facing impact, and a clear example of how small UI decisions can solve big UX problems when validated with the right intent.
The 7 Core Themes Identified
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Timely Delivery
completed all project phases (Alpha, Beta, Final) within deadline and with minimal bugs, ensuring smooth transitions between design and development cycles.
Feature Completion
The MVP successfully incorporated our key features: star ratings, written reviews, reels-style video reviews, support for both albums and songs, all scoped based on user research and iterative testing.
4.6/5
We aimed for a 4.0/5 satisfaction score in usability testing, and exceeded it with a 4.6/5 average. Users highlighted the interface as “modern,” “easy to use,” and “visually engaging.”
Outcomes✨
My reflection
This project reminded me that being a PM isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about asking thoughtful questions, listening closely, and creating space for clarity to unfold.
There were moments when things felt uncertain, and not everyone agreed on the direction. But instead of pushing decisions through, I learned to slow down, refocus the team on what mattered, and stay anchored in the users, the data, and the reason we were building this product in the first place.
Sometimes that meant supporting teammates who felt stretched thin, and other times it meant guiding difficult conversations with honesty and care. I had to adapt, and learning how to connect with different people in different ways.
Looking back, I wouldn’t trade the hard parts. That’s where I actually grew. It wasn’t the smooth moments that shaped me, but the tension, the uncertainty, and the work it took to move forward together.