Strategy · Product Management · Design Direction
December, 2025Building a Classical Music Platform
Younison is a modern audition platform designed to help classical musicians showcase their talent and connect with orchestras and conservatories worldwide. It offers tools like verified one-take video recordings, high-quality audio capture via iPhone, and structured interviews to present both musical skill and personality. Musicians receive expert feedback and a standardized YNS score to track progress and improve over time. By combining discoverability, transparency, and professional evaluation, Younison aims to make auditions more accessible, fair, and efficient.
Stage
MVP
Total downloads
500+
Total project time
13 months
Released since
December, 2025
Classical musicians face a broken audition system: studio fees, travel costs, and application overhead compound for every position they pursue. Orchestras and conservatories are not faring any better: they invest enormous resources reviewing hundreds of submissions, yet most are low-quality or outright fabricated. The system fails both sides: talented musicians cannot afford to be seen, and institutions cannot afford to look properly.
Younison musicians use the platform to record and submit professional audition videos to orchestras, conservatories, and jury panels. A key challenge is that authentic, studio-quality submissions are financially out of reach for most musicians, and institutions have no scalable way to pre-screen for genuine talent.
- My role: I led end-to-end product management and platform design for Younison over one year, owning the initial product requirements, business strategy, creative direction, and three-platform user journey design for web and native mobile.
- The selling story: “Zero barriers to a fair audition”: every decision was anchored in making professional-grade submissions accessible from home, without compromising the quality standards institutions demand.
- Core function: Younison lets musicians record studio-enhanced audition videos from home and submit them directly to orchestras, conservatories, and a curated world-class jury pool, removing financial and geographic barriers to the application process.
Problem framing: connect user pain to business cost
The industry's reliance on in-person, paper-based audition processes is a significant bottleneck, causing financial exclusion for musicians and wasted institutional resources and costing significant amounts per application cycle in combined time and money.
- Inaccessible entry costs: A single orchestra application costs a musician over 500EUR+ in Europe and over $1,000 in the US: studio rental, travel, accommodation, and application fees before a single note is heard by a jury. Most musicians apply to multiple positions per season, making the financial burden compounding and exclusionary.
- A near-monopoly gap in a billion-dollar sector: Classical music generates billions in global institutional revenue, yet only one direct digital competitor exists for audition platforms. The field is operating on paper jury forms and in-person callbacks, meaning whoever establishes digital infrastructure now effectively owns the category. Younison entered at the precise moment the market had no credible default.
The 10x opportunity isn't digitising paper forms. It's making world-class classical talent fully discoverable, regardless of geography or financial means. Done right, Younison doesn't just reduce friction in the current system; it makes the Berlin Philharmonic accessible to a top-class violinist in Indonesia with a $50 microphone and an already owned mobile device.
Research Approach
Conducted interviews with classical musicians, world-renowned artists and jury members, conductors, and orchestra managers to deeply understand the bottlenecks.
Product building and MVP scope definition
Guided the founding team scoping the MVP. I built the founding teams' understanding of the software development lifecycle through introducing PRDs, prioritization methods, and release strategies.
UI Craft & Design Decisions
Defined Younison's UI look and feel across 3 platforms (React Native — web, tablet, mobile), created brand guidelines covering photography and art direction, and created all user journeys targeting 3 personas across 3 application mediums (musicians, orchestras, jury members).
Engineering handovers
Onboarded the freelance engineering team to the product, artifacts, design system, frontend decisions, and clear usability guidelines.
Investor management and communications
Ran workshops in Berlin, Vienna, and Paris with classical musicians, investors, and the core team to keep investment channels fluid.
Younison released the MVP in December 2025. In four months, the project received great feedback from the early users and from the classical music community. Operations started in the US and EU in parallel.
UX Metric 01
Submission completion rate
81%
January-March: 300+ musicians from early access
Percentage of musicians who begin a recording session and successfully submit it, measured by funnel drop-off at each step (setup to record to review to submit). The recording flow is the highest-friction moment in the product; any drop here is a direct UX failure and a lost application.
UX Metric 02
Jury review time
±25 mins
Equivalent in auditions: around one hour per candidate
Median time a jury member or institutional reviewer spends per candidate submission. Bloated review time signals poor information hierarchy or navigation friction in the jury-side UX.
UX Metric 03
Actionability score
4.3
out of 5 / test pool of 20 musicians
Post-feedback survey score (1 to 5) asking musicians how clearly they understood what to improve based on the jury critique they received. Musicians loved the actionable feedback and the defined criteria. The AI summary feature made it easy to digest individual feedback.
Testimonials
Feedback from musicians and institutions during the first release cycle.
“I submitted my application through Younison in one afternoon from my living room. That shift is enormous for someone working as a musician in the classical music industry. It's career-changing.”
Cellist · Applicant, Munich Philharmonic vacancy
“We received 340 applications for a single violin position last season. Reviewing them was a four-week operation involving three staff members and significant scheduling overhead. With Younison's pre-screened submissions, we reduced that to just over a week, and the candidate quality in the final round was noticeably higher.”
Orchestra Director · Staatskapelle Dresden
“The critique I received from the jury panel was detailed. The feedback covered exact passages and explained the phrasing decisions they expected. I went back and re-recorded the same excerpt two weeks later, and the difference was audible. That kind of access to professional evaluation is something conservatory students usually can't find at this price.”
Oboist · Final Year, Conservatori Superior de Musica del Liceu