Spotify

Product Description 
Spotify is an online music subscription service that offers its users access to over 17 million songs. Not only can users listen to their songs via the Spotify application on their computers, but they can organise them into playlists, listen to the songs on their mobile devices, and share songs with other friends who are signed up with the music subscription service.

Target population
The service's target population is anyone who enjoys listening to music, are digitally-savvy, and who use the internet to access or purchase music.

Heuristics

Visibility of System Status
While high-speed internet is likely to be common amongst Spotify users, there are times when the internet gets capped, or it is just a slow day. This affects the streaming rate on Spotify, and causes the audio to get glitchy. When this happens, Spotify does not show any sign of buffering, nor does it pause the music; instead, the music just stops and starts, but if the user is unaware of the fact that it is the internet stalling the stream of music, it seems as if Spotify itself is freezing up. 

Match Between System and Real World
The system's layout is similar to any other music player, and is used in the same way. It uses the same language as social media websites and email, such as "follow", "trending", "starred" and "inbox". It also uses colloquialisms like "what's new" and "queue playlist" to help users find new music and to navigate the system. It sticks to language that the common user would be familiar with, so there is no need to consult a help guide to be able to use Spotify.

Another feature that does not seem to work is the shuffle and repeat buttons. These are commonly featured in other music playing applications to allow the user to automatically control what gets played and how many times. While the shuffle button works well enough, the repeat button does not seem to do anything. This is annoying because shuffle and repeat are standard control features in any music playing device, and to not be able to use one of them is frustrating.

Recognition Rather than Recall
Because the system's layout is similar to many other music players, it is fairly easy for a user who is familiar with iTunes or Window's Media Player to understand how to use Spotify with ease. The search bar is clearly labelled at the top of the screen, and double-clicking on a song will start playing it, so it's all very standard.

Flexibility and Freedom of Use
Spotify offers three tiers of access to their users: free, unlimited and premium. The free subscription just needs the user to sign up and download the Spotify application onto their computer, from which they will be able to access and listen to countless songs available in the cloud. Unlimited is $6.99 a month and allows the user to listen to songs on their computer and laptop ad-free. Finally, Premium allows the users to listen to songs on all their devices -- computer, laptop, phones and tablets -- ad-free. Premium also allows users to listen to music in offline mode for $11.99 per month.

Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
When typically in use, the Spotify application has a three-column layout, as shown above. The first column is for main window control, the main window features music and artist pages, and the third column alternates between a social stream and a place for ads. The ads alternate between the third column, and the bottom bar but it rarely interferes with using the application itself.

Conclusion 
Spotify is easy to use, and is incredibly intuitive, provided that the user has had experience with any other music player. The system is not great at indicating when there is an interruption in the streaming process, but the demographics that Spotify is aimed at would most likely already have regular access to internet with high enough speeds to stream audio.