Forté Music – AI-Powered Customer Engagement

Challenge: Forté Music, an innovative music discovery platform, wanted to improve user engagement and artist interaction while reducing the manual workload of their Client: Forté MusicIndustry: Music Tech / EntertainmentDuration: 5 MonthsAI Solution: ChatAI – AI-Powered Chatbot & Personalization EngineTDCM.ai Team: 5 specialists (AI engineer, NLP specialist, frontend/backend devs, project lead)

The Sound of Opportunity

In the crowded and ever-evolving world of digital music platforms, Forté Music carved out a niche by focusing on authentic music discovery—helping users find emerging talent, and giving independent artists a space to be heard. But success comes with new challenges.

By mid-2023, Forté Music had hit a growth spurt. Thousands of new users were signing up monthly, and artists were flocking to the platform to set up their profiles. What had started as a lean and agile startup was now dealing with an influx of user queries, onboarding requests, and support tickets that overwhelmed their small team. Manual responses were time-consuming, repetitive, and not scalable.

Even worse, users were dropping off before they could be fully engaged. Forté Music needed a smarter way to engage with listeners and help artists join smoothly—without burning out their support team.

When Forté Met TDCM.ai

That’s where we stepped in.

Forté Music approached TDCM.ai with a clear but complex request: “Can you help us automate user interactions, improve artist onboarding, and boost engagement—without losing the human touch?”

We knew we had to create something intelligent, dynamic, and aligned with the tone and spirit of Forté's brand. More importantly, we needed to do it quickly and collaboratively. Our AI should behave like a savvy music assistant—not a robotic gatekeeper.

The First Bars: Discovery & Strategy Phase (Weeks 1–2)

Our process always begins with deep listening—just like a good DJ. In a two-week discovery sprint, we worked closely with Forté’s leadership, product managers, and community support team to map out:

• The most common user queries (and their current response flows)

• Artist onboarding friction points

• Customer support volume and ticket breakdown

• Missed engagement opportunities (e.g., users browsing but not converting)

Using this data, we designed a blueprint for ChatAI, a multi-functional AI assistant embedded directly in the platform.

We identified three key user flows to automate:

1. General user support – account help, password resets, navigation

2. Music recommendations – context-aware suggestions based on user behavior

3. Artist onboarding – guiding musicians through profile creation, linking socials, and uploading music
   

Writing the AI Symphony: Development Phase (Weeks 3–10)

NLP That Knows the Beat

We developed ChatAI on top of a powerful LLM (large language model) fine-tuned with domain-specific data from Forté’s database, FAQs, and user support transcripts. Our NLP engineer worked on training the bot to recognize colloquial phrases common in music slang—so that "drop a beat" or "show me fire tracks" were properly understood.

Personalized Recommendations Engine

To enhance engagement, our AI team connected ChatAI with Forté’s backend recommendation engine. Now, the bot could suggest artists, tracks, or playlists based on a user’s listening history, likes, or even moods they typed in (e.g., “chill vibes” or “workout music”).

Onboarding Flow for Artists

For musicians, we created a wizard-like experience. Artists could ask ChatAI questions like:

• “How do I link my Spotify?”

• “Can I upload unfinished tracks?”

• “How do I get featured?”
  

Behind the scenes, ChatAI pulled data from Forté’s knowledge base and surfaced step-by-step, conversational instructions. The AI could also flag incomplete profiles and prompt artists to finish setting them up.

Team Composition

Our squad on this project included:

• 1 AI engineer – building and fine-tuning the ML model

• 1 NLP specialist – customizing language understanding to music/artist terminology

• 1 Backend developer – integrating with Forté’s API and user database

• 1 Frontend developer – embedding ChatAI into the web and mobile interfaces

• 1 Project manager – keeping timeline and communication flowing smoothly
  

We held weekly demo sessions with Forté to gather feedback, adjust tone, and expand the AI’s conversational tree.

Challenges We Faced

Of course, not everything was smooth.

1. Cold Start ProblemAt first, the AI lacked sufficient context to recommend music for brand new users. We solved this by designing a "quick quiz" that ChatAI could ask to collect mood, genre, and activity preferences.

2. Tone & PersonalityForté wanted ChatAI to feel like a mix between a helpful friend and a music-savvy guide—not corporate or robotic. This required a ton of iteration, testing, and adjusting default language.

3. Artist SkepticismSome artists were hesitant to engage with an automated system. We solved this by combining AI onboarding with occasional human "nudges" and a chatbot that transparently handed off to a real team member if needed.
   

Launch & Rollout (Weeks 11–16)

The full ChatAI bot was launched in a soft beta on Forté’s site and mobile app in early Q4. The team monitored live interactions using a feedback dashboard we built that categorized:

• Satisfaction scores

• Drop-off points

• Common unanswered questions

This helped us fine-tune the AI even further in the first two weeks post-launch.

The Crescendo: Results

Within 6 weeks of launch, the results were music to everyone’s ears:

• ✅ 1,300+ artist profiles created and growingArtists found onboarding easier, faster, and more intuitive.

• ✅ 2,800+ active users engaging with AI recommendationsPersonalized discovery became a feature users actively used—many chatted with the bot multiple times per session.

• ✅ 24/7 AI-driven customer supportReduced average support ticket response time by 40%. ChatAI now handles 70% of support interactions autonomously.

• ✅ Human support team workload dropped by 60%Allowing Forté staff to focus on community building and featured artist campaigns.
  

And perhaps the most satisfying feedback of all came directly from Forté’s leadership:

📢 "TDCM.ai’s AI-powered chatbot transformed how we interact with our users. Engagement rates skyrocketed!"– Liam Sheppard, Director, Forté Music

Encore: What’s Next

Following this success, we’re now working with Forté to:

• Expand ChatAI into voice assistants

• Introduce AI-generated artist bios

• Add real-time translation for non-English-speaking users
  

With this partnership, Forté Music has positioned itself not just as a music discovery platform, but a smart discovery companion—powered by AI, tuned by humans.

Interested in transforming your platform with AI like Forté Music?Let's talk: tdcm.ai

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