A mobile app that connects emerging musicians with music venues. No middlemen, no inbox chaos, no month-long back-and-forth to book a stage.
Spain's live music market generates over €725M per year. Yet only 1 in 4 artists manages to live off their music. In Madrid and Barcelona, more than 20 gigs by emerging bands take place every week and most of them happen through personal contacts, not through any system.
The market exists. The talent exists. What's missing is the digital infrastructure to connect them efficiently and without friction.
Design a platform that works simultaneously for two user groups with opposing needs: emerging musicians who need visibility and access, and venue managers who need efficiency and trust.
One single app. Two audiences with completely different friction points.
70% of musicians identify lack of visibility in events and venues as their main challenge regardless of their level of talent or experience.
73.3% agreed that limited connections and high associated costs are the main obstacles to getting on stage.
Venues and musicians coordinate via email and social media channels that generate misunderstandings, delays, and missed opportunities on both sides.
"Organising gigs independently is an exhausting and complex process. You don't know where to start, or whether anyone will ever get back to you."
Emerging musician · In-depth interview · Barcelona, 2025
How might we help musicians and venues find each other and agree on terms without relying on middlemen or informal channels?
How might we give artists enough visibility for venues to trust booking them even without an established track record?
How might we simplify the entire gig process from first contact to confirmation into a single, friction-free flow?
No emails, no social media. One dedicated channel with a full history of every negotiation.
Digital press kit + performance history + real ratings that give every proposal credibility.
Genre, location, venue capacity and availability so every venue finds the right artist.
A two-way verified system backed by real performances. No rating without a confirmed gig.
We started with paper sketches, moved to low-fidelity wireframes in Figma, and validated them through tree testing and card sorting. The application user flow was the most iterated piece we mapped every decision point before designing a single high-fidelity screen.
We defined success metrics before designing the screens: application time, venue response rate, and user satisfaction after the first interaction.
Digital press kits for musicians, technical spec sheets for venues. A negotiation system built into the chat that eliminates the ambiguity of informal agreements.
A visual identity built on the energy of live music. Orange #FF6F29 on black #1D1D1B. A coherent design system covering both user profiles.
A progressive onboarding that teaches without blocking. Users see the value before filling in their full profile — a critical decision for our completion rate.
Every testing round revealed friction points that wireframes couldn't anticipate. Three iterations, three better versions.
Too many required steps during onboarding. 4 out of 6 musicians didn't finish the registration — the app was asking for too much information before showing any value. We redesigned the flow: users explore first, complete their profile later.
The artist profile prioritised text over audio. Venue managers listened to the music sample before reading any description. We reordered the profile card: photo and audio first, secondary information below.
The rating system felt untrustworthy at first. Without real evidence, numbers don't convince anyone. We added verification tied to confirmed past gigs — no confirmed performance, no rating.
The home screen showed 12 possible actions with no clear hierarchy. Venue managers needed over 3 minutes to find new applications.
We reduced it to the 3 most frequent actions. Time to reach new applications dropped to under 30 seconds in subsequent testing sessions.
LOUD! is the infrastructure that turns connecting musicians and venues into something predictable, transparent and friction-free. Both sides get what they need. The stage fills up.
Five things I carry into every project from now on
Every interface decision had to work for both musicians and venue managers at the same time. This pushed me to question every assumption about what information was "obvious" — because it was obvious to one group and completely invisible to the other.
Losing a user in the first few steps means losing them permanently. Reducing friction during sign-up — letting users explore before completing their profile — was the single decision with the greatest impact on our completion rate.
Our rating system failed in early testing because it lacked real evidence. Numbers alone don't convince anyone — neither musicians nor managers. Tying ratings to verified past performances completely changed the perceived credibility of the system.
Mapping the user flow before opening Figma forced us to answer questions we would have ignored until testing. What happens if the venue doesn't reply? What if the user isn't logged in? These edge cases shaped the design more than any visual decision did.
Five perspectives during interviews captured nuances that a single researcher would have missed. The collective synthesis — discussing what each person heard differently — was as valuable as the raw data itself.