Zee5 music
Designing a native music experience inside an OTT platform
0-1
OTT
B2C
Client
Zee5
My Role
Lead Product Designer
Team
Team of 9
Duration
4 months +20 months after launch
PROBLEM
ZEE5 had movie soundtracks, music videos, and regional audio content scattered across its OTT library but no dedicated way to discover or listen to them without leaving the video experience entirely.
SOLUTION
A native music layer inside ZEE5 that treats audio and video as one continuous experience, built around regional relevance, low-effort discovery, and audio-video parity instead of a bolted-on player.
OUTCOME
01 — OVERVIEW
Overview
ZEE5 is one of India's major OTT platforms, built primarily around video films, shows, and regional content. Music existed on the platform only as a byproduct of video (soundtracks, background scores), with no dedicated surface for discovery or standalone listening.
The team set out to answer whether a native music experience could live inside ZEE5 without turning it into "a Spotify competitor," instead using ZEE5's own strengths (regional content, exclusive soundtracks, an existing OTT audience) as the actual product advantage. At the time of shipping, ZEE5 had 104.8M MAUs and 10.5M DAUs, with viewers averaging 214 minutes of monthly watch time- the scale this feature had to work within from day one.
02 — THE PROBLEM
The Problem
"How might we design a native music experience within ZEE5 that enables effortless discovery, respects regional preferences, and increases daily user engagement without disrupting the core OTT experience?"
Music-adjacent behavior already existed on the platform (movie soundtracks, performance clips, background scores), but users had no dedicated way to access it. Anyone who wanted to actually listen to a song had to leave ZEE5 entirely and open a separate music app, breaking continuity at the exact moment engagement was highest (right after watching something they liked).
So this wasn't a "build a music app" problem. It was a retention-and-continuity problem: keep the moment of musical interest inside the platform that already generated it, instead of exporting that attention to Spotify, Gaana, or JioSaavn.
03 — RESEARCH
Research
Research combined primary and secondary methods to triangulate both user behavior and the competitive landscape:
User interviews
online surveys
FOCUS GROUPS
USABILITY TESTING
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
DATA REVIEW
POST-LAUNCH ANALYSIS
13K+
ZEE CONSUMER RESEARCH CONTEXT
3
FOCUS GROUPS
18-24
FOCUS-GROUP PARTICIPANTS
10
LANGUAGES IN BROADER RESEARCH
PERSONAS
Aarav, "The Regional Music Explorer"
25, Graduate Student, Mumbai — iPhone, Laptop
Listens in short, frequent sessions: commutes, study breaks, multitasking
Prefers familiar regional songs and movie soundtracks over actively discovering new artists.
Rarely creates or manages playlists. Relies on recognition-based selection.
Switches between listening and watching related content depending on mood
Key insight
Familiarity over novelty: regional language, movie associations, and nostalgia drive engagement more than global trends. Music is ambient, not a focused activity, and low tolerance for complexity means dense interfaces cause drop-off fast.
Meera, "The Video-First Entertainment User"
Working Professional, Delhi — iPhone, Smart TV
Primarily consumes music through videos, performances, and visual storytelling while watching movies/shows
Discovers music incidentally not through active exploration
Use a smart TV for lean back viewing, mobile for quick follow-up
Rarely initiates audio-only listening without visual or narrative context
Key insight
Visual context fuels connection - meaningful discovery happens when music is tied to a scene or performance, not standalone browsing. Fragmented experiences (switching formats or apps) actively reduce engagement.
04 — COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Competitive Analysis
Rather than benchmark against music-only apps as direct competitors, the analysis focused on where each existing player was strong or weak on the dimensions that actually mattered for an OTT-native audience.
No competitor combined ZEE5's specific strengths exclusive regional soundtracks, an existing OTT-scale audience, and native audio+video parity into one experience. That gap became the actual product opportunity, rather than trying to out-Spotify Spotify.
05 — Positioning Decisions
Positioning Decisions
Of everything we explored, two ideas stood out enough to skip wireframes entirely and vibe-code straight into working proofs of concept. Neither held up, and killing them is what shaped the two features we actually shipped.
KILLED
Considered A full standalone music app, competing directly with Spotify/Gaana/JioSaavn on their terms.
WHY NOT
Rejected because ZEE5's actual advantage (video, regional exclusives, an existing captive audience) would be diluted, not leveraged, by competing on personalization depth and library features where dedicated music apps already had a multi-year head start.
CHOSEN
A discovery-first, region-led music layer native to ZEE5, built on audio + video parity.
WHY
This let the product lean entirely into what ZEE5 already had that no music-only app could easily replicate: exclusive movie soundtracks and performance content, tied directly to the video library users were already engaging with.
06 — THE BET
The Bet
Music videos and performance content would drive stronger emotional engagement and longer sessions than audio-only listening because, for this audience, music wasn't a separate activity from watching, it was an extension of it.
That bet shaped a single core design principle: treat audio and video as one continuous surface, not two competing product experiences bolted together.
Audio and video as one continuous surface.
07 — THE SOLUTION
Solution 01- Discovery Surfaces
TRENDING / TOP ARTISTS / NEW BEATS
A dedicated discovery layer surfaces regional and familiar content first, rather than defaulting to global charts or cold-start algorithmic recommendations.
01
Trending, Top Artists, and New Beats are presented as parallel, low-effort entry points, not a single algorithmic feed
02
Regional relevance is weighted by default, surfacing familiar language and movie-soundtrack content ahead of global trends
03
Each surface is designed for recognition-based browsing (matching Aarav's behavior), not search-driven discovery
Discovery over search
Solution 02- Audio + Video Parity
Without being asked, the system surfaces what's relevant to each expert: skill gaps against the market, follow-ups from their own questions, and renewals before they lapse.
01
Before a certification lapses, it flags the renewal on its own, closing a notification gap users complained about directly.
02
Unprompted, it measures a user's skill profile against what the market is hiring for and builds a path to close the gap it finds.
03
It reads the questions a user asked Solve and recommends what to learn next so the follow-up finds them, instead of waiting to be searched for.
None of this waits for a request. The platform does the noticing and brings the next step to the user.
08 — Design Principles
Design Principles
Five principles anchored every design decision back to the research:
09 — Defining Success & Constraints
Defining Success & Constraints
POTENTIAL LIMITATIONS
TECHNICAL CONSTRAINTS
Reliance on existing OTT infrastructure limited how deep true music-specific personalization could go
PLATFORM DEPENDENCY
Music engagement was tied to overall ZEE5 app traffic rather than standing on its own as an independent destination, growth here depends on ZEE5's broader usage, not just the music feature in isolation
PRIMARY OBJECTIVES FULFILLED
Positioned as a discovery-first, region-led music experience rather than a full-scale Spotify alternative
Leveraged exclusive movie soundtracks and music videos unique to ZEE5
Enabled audio + video parity, creating emotional engagement that competitors could not easily replicate
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
The product didn't need to win on personalization depth or library size; it won by making something only ZEE5 could offer (exclusive video-linked audio content) accessible in a native, low-friction way.
10 — Testing & Post-Launch Data
Testing & Post-Launch Data
Usability testing validated the discovery flows before wider exposure; post-launch data review then measured actual listening behavior once the feature shipped.
KEY BEHAVIORAL FINDING
Music videos drove stronger emotional engagement and longer sessions than audio-only listening, directly validating the audio+video parity bet.
11 — IMPACT
Impact
The CTR lift is the core validation of the audio+video parity bet: once music was reachable natively from the content that generated interest in it, users acted on that interest at more than double the previous rate inside a platform already operating at ZEE5's scale (104.8M MAUs, 214 minutes of average monthly watch time per viewer).
120%
0.40% → 0.88% CTR in 60 days
10K+
songs across Hindi & regional languages
104.8M
ZEE5 MAUs at the time
10.5M
ZEE5 DAUs at the time
12 — NEXT STEPS
Next Steps
01
AI-powered playlists
02
Artist-curated experiences
03
Podcasts and live audio
04
Song watch parties
05
Social playlist sharing
13 — Conclusion