Redesigning The “BBC Introducing” Artists Website

The Challenge

The BBC needed a new system to underpin its BBC Introducing service, which helps rising artists get their music broadcast.

BBC Introducing supports undiscovered musicians, offering a platform for them to gain exposure across BBC Radio and at major events, such as Glastonbury. It’s been a big success and the BBC wanted to refresh the systems underpinning it.

This involved completely redesigning and rewriting the website that artists use to upload their music and the dashboards enabling BBC show producers to explore tracks and manage their libraries. Given the number of other BBC systems and processes that BBC Introducing interacts with, this was a complex undertaking.

The BBC also wanted the platform to be easily extensible with new features – and a partner that could support and continually enhance it.

Our Solution

We designed, built and now manage a state-of-the-art, extensible platform with a high-quality user experience.

We helped the BBC shape its requirements, then took full responsibility for the architectural design and delivery of the new system, as well as the user experience of the producer dashboards.

From the early business analysis phase right through to launch, we held regular workshops with the BBC to understand users’ requirements. These helped inform our technology and application architecture choices, and later enabled us to gather feedback on our designs and continually refine the user experience.

Using React for the user interface meant we could create an intuitive, all-in-one dashboard for producers, which streamlined the way they work, in part thanks to an embedded music player.

And to create a platform that could easily be added to in the future, we built an API using Scala.

The Result

A popular platform that’s fast, easy-to-use can evolve as new features are required.

We delivered the new platform into use and decommissioned its predecessor. As a result, everyone using BBC Introducing now benefits from a significantly faster service with a much-improved user experience.

Following the successful launch, Softwire remains a trusted partner, responsible for the platform’s upkeep and ongoing enhancements. Because Introducing is built to be easily maintainable, the Softwire team can focus primarily on shaping and delivering a roadmap of new features, as opposed to low-level administration.

All of this is making it ever-easier for new musical talent to get discovered on the BBC.