Product Onboarding Breakdown: Udio

I recently took Udio—a promising new music-generation app—for a spin, and it quickly reminded me just how crucial first impressions are in shaping a user’s experience.

Right away, Udio greets you with a clean, familiar login screen: “Sign up for free to continue,” with the usual suspects like Google, Apple, and Discord waiting to authenticate you. On the right side of the screen, there’s a fun little teaser: “A song about logging into Udio is loading…”. Clever and playful—except that the song never actually loaded. Not exactly the smooth start I was hoping for.

Udio's sign-up screen with authentication options and the teaser for a loading song.

For an app built around music generation, this was a missed opportunity for instant user delight. Since this isn’t relying on user input, pre-caching the audio and making sure it plays instantly feels like a no-brainer.

Once logged in, I hit another stumbling block. Udio presented me with a large, somewhat intimidating blank prompt, asking simply: “Describe your song.” Sure, the placeholder text—“A heist planned and executed by a group of cats. Spy jazz. Bossa nova."—was amusing and quirky, but it left me feeling stuck. Most users (myself included!) aren’t natural prompt-engineers. It was classic choice paralysis: when you’re presented with too many possibilities upfront, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

The song creation interface with a blank prompt and placeholder text examples.

Here’s how I think Udio could tackle this:

First, introduce quick, engaging questions during onboarding—something casual and fun like, “Are you more Taylor Swift or Kendrick Lamar? EDM or country?”. Then, Udio could dynamically generate a personalized prompt based on these answers, providing just enough creative guardrails to ease the user into the app without overwhelming them.

Alternatively, why not showcase the very best of Udio right from the start? Pre-populate the initial prompt with a tried-and-true, crowd-pleasing suggestion from the Udio team’s favorites. Users click “Create,” and they’re immediately impressed by the app’s capabilities.

Behind these small improvements is a simple idea: the smoother and easier you make the first few steps, the more likely users will stick around and explore further.

A little growth hack: After generating that first track, why not gently nudge users to share their creation? A simple prompt like, “Like what you made? Share it with your friends!” turns delighted users into advocates, helping Udio grow organically.

Bottom line – onboarding experiences should prioritize quick wins and easy delights. Udio already has a compelling core product. With a few thoughtful tweaks to its onboarding, the app could truly hit all the right notes from the very first interaction.