Monetization Form
The SoundCloud Monetization Form allows artists to quickly submit the information required to monetize their tracks during the upload process, enabling them to start earning revenue as soon as their music is published.
Project Details
Duration: 3 months
Team: I partnered closely with my Product Manager and Engineering Lead, and collaborated with the Com-Ops team to ensure the monetization form content met all legal and compliance requirements.
Role: Design lead responsible for UX research and internal audit of the existing flow, redesigning the monetization form and interaction model, defining UI components and micro-interactions, and prototyping and collaborating with engineering through implementation.
Project Impact
Increase in monetized tracks on SoundCloud
Decrease in monetization related support tickets
Faster time-to-monetization (artists are able to monetize during upload rather than after)
Increase in monetization form completion rate
Problem Area
Monetization is a key milestone in an artist’s journey, allowing creators to earn revenue from their music. Today, the monetization flow lives on a separate platform—SoundCloud for Artists—which limits visibility for many SoundCloud.com users. As a result, a large portion of artists are unaware of the feature and never engage with it. On top of that, the current experience is outdated and does not follow modern UX or form design best practices.
How might we design a simple, guided monetization flow that helps artists start earning from their tracks as quickly as possible?
FOR REFERENCE
Existing design
Through running an internal audit on the current design in production, a few core issues were identified:
Fragmented entry point
The monetization flow currently lives on a separate platform, artists.soundcloud.com, creating a disconnected experience that makes it difficult for artists to discover and access monetization directly from SoundCloud.com.
High cognitive load
The existing form presents a large amount of information at once without clear guidance or progressive disclosure. As a result, the experience feels overwhelming for artists—particularly those new to monetization.
Interaction and validation friction
Several form inputs and micro-interactions do not follow modern UX best practices, resulting in unclear field behavior and confusing error validation that can interrupt the submission process.