AI-Driven UX Personalization Boosts User Retention and Paid Conversions for Nugs.net

Nugs.net is a music streaming and live recording platform that offers access to high-quality recordings of live performances from a variety of genres, including rock, bluegrass, jazz, and country. The company's mission is to provide fans with the best possible concert experience online through its extensive library of live recordings and its commitment to delivering top-notch sound quality. The nugs.net catalog embodies the world’s largest collection of live shows, including live performances from some of the world's most popular touring artists, like Metallica, Pearl Jam, Dead & Company, Billy Strings, as well as many up-and-coming acts for users to discover. Nugs.net is known for partnering with musicians and bands, providing them with a platform to sell and distribute their live recordings directly to fans.

Nugs.net, a music streaming and live recording platform, aimed to enhance its user experience by delivering a superior platform for music fans who enjoy live performances. The company wanted to increase user retention, conversion rates, and profitability by improving UX personalization. The challenge was to incorporate AI recommendations to improve content discoverability, listening diversity, catalog observability, and the scope of artist following. Nugs.net also faced growth seasonality, with users typically sticking to newly performed and released concerts and recordings. This was highly dependent on artists’ schedules, which could be disrupted by various factors, making for an unpredictable growth strategy. Another challenge was the user tendency to stick to one or two favorite artists or genres, making Nugs.net even more dependent on growth seasonality for retention.

Provectus, a strategic partner of Nugs.net, provided expert guidance and support in the creation and delivery of product development and growth strategies. They leveraged their expertise in product strategy and design, AIML development, and KPI-based AI solutions delivery, to assist Nugs.net in its digital and AI transformation journey. The solution involved the delivery of the AI recommendations project, which was a fundamental step towards achieving better user experience, improving conversion rates, and increasing profitability. Provectus also used Amplitude for advanced behavioral analytics, delivering flexibility and power in all product management processes with a data-driven framework. They also proposed a comprehensive “quality control framework” consisting of three metric assessment processes: AI/ML metrics, Product metrics, and Expert & User opinions.

• The release of AI recommendations resulted in overwhelmingly positive feedback from users and stakeholders. The playback diversity trend significantly increased, with users playing up to 15% more older shows. Nugs.net achieved a significant increase in artist followings and almost doubled its retention of new daily users. Notably, users who listened to recommendations had a 40% higher retention rate, and trial users had a more than 2x higher conversion-to-paid rate. Based on these impressive results, the ROI for the AI recommendations MVP project was calculated to be 183% in the 12 months following its release. This outstanding result was achieved through the collaborative efforts of Provectus’ product, design, mobile, web, backend, and AIML teams.

• 40% improvement in user retention rate

• 2x increase in paid plan conversions

• 183% ROI of the project over 12 months