Overview
Respond with Music
Why Music in Messenger?
Design Challenges
Sending Music
Receiving Music

Putting music where messages already live.

Meta

Putting music where messages already live.

A hackathon bet that native music in threads could unlock a new way to express yourself, grounded in real attachment and Story behavior.

Messenger - Respond with Music

Respond with Music

This was a Facebook 3-day hackathon project with the theme "Music." Our cross-org team, 1 product designer (me), 5 engineers, and 2 PMs, conceived and built a native music feature for Messenger threads.

Why Music in Messenger?

The data made a compelling case:

1.1 Billion

weekly impressions from music screenshots in Instagram Stories

40%

of video Stories shared with background music

61 Billion

attachments sent through Messenger weekly

People were already using music as expression across Meta's platforms, but Messenger had no native way to share it. The opportunity felt obvious and previously unexplored.

Design Challenges

My role was end-to-end design of the feature, including interaction prototypes. Three main problems to solve:

Cohesiveness

Music needed to feel native alongside stickers, emojis, and other Messenger expression types.

Contextual search

Simple insertion was table stakes. The real challenge was helping people find the right song efficiently, similar to the way GIF search surfaces contextually relevant results.

Audio etiquette

Receiving an auto-playing audio message in a meeting or quiet room is hostile. Listening needed to be an opt-in experience without feeling heavy.

Sending Music

Receiving Music

Would you like some music
for the right vibes?

What's the mood?