Eric West: Turning Music Discovery Into a Social Game

Music discovery has never been easier, yet some of the best musical finds still come from other people. Music League is built around that idea, combining themed playlists, friendly competition and social interaction to help people discover music they might otherwise never hear.

What began as a game among a dozen coworkers in central Iowa has grown into a platform with more than a million registered users, driven entirely by word of mouth. We spoke to founder and CEO, Eric West about the origins of Music League, why human connection remains central to music discovery and how the platform plans to grow without losing what makes it special.

For those who may not know, tell us about Music League.

Music League is a social music discovery game. The easiest way I describe it is fantasy sports meets book club, but for music.

Someone creates a league, then invites friends, family or coworkers – or leaves it open for other Music Leaguers. Each league is a series of themed rounds. Everyone submits a song based on the theme, those songs become an anonymous playlist, and you listen, vote and leave comments. Then the submissions are revealed and somebody wins.

The competition gets people to participate, but they keep playing because they discover music they wouldn't have found otherwise and connect with other people.

We've grown from a handful of coworkers – literally a dozen - to more than a million registered users, entirely through word of mouth. People play and think, "I have another group who would love this," and start another league.

Music League blends music discovery with friendly competition. Take us back to the beginning: where did the idea come from?

I always have to correct one part of the origin story because I didn't actually invent the game.

It started with coworkers in central Iowa, where we’re still located, arguing about who had the best taste in music. They turned that into a competition that is the basis of today’s version. Initially they managed everything manually. One of them eventually built a basic web app to save themselves the work.

I heard about it through an old high school friend who knew I loved music. Which is true, but the business potential was motivation enough. It sounded brilliant. I'd spent most of my career as an entrepreneur, but not in music, which I had wanted to do since college. When the opportunity came along, I partnered with one of the original creators and I built a company around it.

What I loved then is still what I love now: music fans have access to essentially every song ever recorded – which is a relatively new phenomenon. I don’t think we have handled that access very well. We lost the best part of music discoveries - another person saying, "You have to hear this." Not an algorithm for sure, not even an easily dismissible text – people want to listen so they can properly play the game. They find new music, or rediscover forgotten favorites, almost by accident.

At its core, a league is rounds, themes, submissions, a playlist and then votes and comments. How did you land on that format, and what did you try that didn't work?

The interesting thing is how little the basic game has changed. The core loop was there very early: a theme, anonymous song submissions, a playlist, voting and a reveal.

Each constraint matters. The theme makes you dig through your musical memory. Choosing a song, or songs, forces a decision. Anonymity means you react to the song rather than the person. Voting gives you a reason to listen. And the reveal is this great social moment when you find out who's been secretly a death metal fan …or Taylor Swift. The best lists generally fall somewhere between, but also all over the spectrum.

We've experimented with features around that loop, but we've learned that adding functionality isn't the same thing as adding value. With a large user base, you can find a constituency for almost any feature. Build them all and you've made a different product.

So we keep asking whether something makes the core experience better. We're adding more to the platform, particularly social features to increase time-spent-in-app (and because our fans asked for it), but we want to preserve the simplicity that made the game work or at least make new features optional.

A lot of the magic seems to be in the comments and the themes. Did you expect the social side to become as big as the music itself?

Sort of, but not to the extent we’ve seen. That's probably the most important thing our users have taught us.

We thought we were building a music discovery game. But when we asked people why they played, connection kept showing up alongside discovery and competition.

Comments were a big clue. We thought of them as a supporting feature. Instead, they're where a league's personality lives. People explain their songs, tease each other, argue about the theme and learn things about friends they've known for years, coworkers they just met and family they known their entire lives.

My favorite example is the grandmother who told us Music League got her grandchildren listening to the Beatles—and then added that they got her listening to Skrillex.

Music is the medium, but the interaction between people is the product.

That's when you realize you're building more than a way to make playlists. The songs give people something to talk about, but the conversations are what make each league – and the whole platform - feel like a community.

Music discovery is a crowded space, with streaming platforms and algorithms all competing for attention. Why do you think people prefer discovering music through friends in a game?

Broadly speaking, yes, music discovery is crowded, but gamifying it is still pretty niche.

Algorithms are incredibly good at giving you more of what you already like. That's useful. I use them too, mostly for passive listening while doing something else – Music League is the opposite of that.

The music you really love often comes from a person: a friend playing something in their car, someone making you a mixtape, an older brother with an album. There's context attached to those discoveries.

Music League recreates that and gives you a reason to actually listen.

If I text you a Spotify link, there's a pretty good chance you never click it. In Music League, you need to decide which songs deserve your votes, so you listen to music you might otherwise have skipped after 15 seconds.

Because someone chose that song for this group and theme, you're also trying to understand why they picked it, whether it fits the theme and exactly how much you like it – relative to the other songs on the list, anyway.

Looking ahead, what's next for Music League?

The challenge is making Music League much bigger without making it less of what made Music League succeed in the first place – the game.

For most of our history, we've been a game you play with people you already know. That's gotten us to more than a million registered users with essentially no paid user acquisition. Now we're starting to connect those groups.

We're making it easier to discover leagues and people through music, and we're especially interested in artists and music-first brands becoming participants. Fans are already submitting their songs and talking about them on Music League. Artists can step into those communities and interact in a way that feels more natural than another social-media post or advertisement.

Brands can eventually participate too, as long as they add to the experience rather than interrupt it.

There's a much larger social platform hiding inside this simple game, but there's also a temptation to build everything. Scaling successfully means resisting that. We need to keep making Music League better for people who love discovering and sharing music—and make it easier for them to find each other if they want and easy to avoid it if they don’t.

We don't need Music League to become an app for everyone. We need to stay focused on what made people care in the first place.

Eric West will also be joining us in San Francisco for How Niche Apps Stay Focused as They Scale, a session exploring how apps can grow their user base and revenue without losing the distinctive identity that made them successful in the first place.

See our full agenda here: San Francisco Agenda | Appsforum