It seems that the internet has made our lives simpler in many ways, and one of those ways is by making it easier for us to access and listen to music. Online music streaming services have now dominated the experience of using CDs or cassettes.
YouTube is a major source of music streaming, but it has its drawbacks. For example, it’s difficult to download music, and you have to stay online constantly.
This led to many music streaming apps like Tidal, SoundCloud, iTunes, Grooveshark, Spotify, and Google Play.
A music streaming app is a place for users to search and play any music online for free. If the user wants to download the music or stream offline, a paid subscription will be required. The app also allows the user to search based on the album, genre, artist, and more.
Music streaming apps are well known for the comfort that they offer to their users.
If you’re a fan of music, chances are you’ve already heard about Spotify from friends or followers on social networks. What makes it different from other streaming services is that you can listen to any song in the same way as a radio station – it’s a whole new way to discover and listen to your favorite songs.
Also read: Spotify Stats – What Makes A Music Giant?
Pandora is changing the way people experience music and podcasts—forever.
A personalized music and podcast discovery platform that captivates and keeps your audience, Pandora is free and easy to use. Based on a user’s musical tastes, they curate inspired, high-quality personalized radio stations that sound just like the music they prefer.
Also read: Build Music Apps Like Pandora
The Apple Music service not only offers you to stream on-demand any track from the iTunes catalogue but also access all your music in one place, whether purchased from iTunes, copied from a CD, or downloaded from the web.
There are multiple things to consider before starting off the app development process. The top 3 are mentioned here for you.
It is important to determine which type of music streaming app you want to build. Here are the three common types:
Music Library | Offers a server-based music library that the users can access either for free or via a paid subscription (whichever you choose to build in the app) |
Cloud Storage | Offers users to store their songs helping them access their library anywhere, anytime. |
Radio Stations | Offers a range of radio stations that can be categorized in themes and streamed on multiple devices. |
Since Tidal is a server-based music streaming app, we will learn how to build a music streaming app with server-based music library.
It’s important to take care of streaming data storage before you begin developing a music streaming app. One option is to stream through third-party APIs.
If you’d rather not use a third-party service, you can also host your own app on a server. In this case, you upload your songs to a directory somewhere on the web.
It’s too difficult to develop applications for two platforms (iOS and Android) at once, so you should start with the one that makes the most sense for your business. For example, Apple Inc. created an Apple Music app for Android devices because Android users account for almost over 80% of app users around the world.
If you’re on a budget, it’s possible to choose a platform for your app based on your target audience and their preferences. For example, in the US, people prefer iOS devices. While in Europe people prefer Android devices.
When it comes to music apps, Tidal is king for a reason. Music services with only average features don’t stand a chance in the market. These are the top features you need in your music app if you want it to rank.
User Profile
Your app needs to create a profile for each user and recognize the user across all devices.
Search Bar
The app must allow users to search and play songs. Thus, you need to add filter options based on track title, artist name, or genre and save their favorite music.
Real-Time Notifications
Users will be able to receive push notifications about the latest song tracks, updates, and more.
Playlist
The most important feature to add is the ability for users to save their songs in their playlists, edit, and listen to them online and offline.
Feature | Back-end development hours | iOS development hours | Android development hours |
User Profile | 27 hours | 38 hours | 38 hours |
Search bar | 24 hours | 51 hours | 51 hours |
Real-time notifications | 11 hours | 140 hours | 140 hours |
Playlist | 83 hours | 61 hours | 61 hours |
Total | 145 hours | 290 hours | 290 hours |
To start off your app development journey, you need to assemble a team of tech genies, namely in the following specialties:
The tech stack of music streaming apps requires various programming languages, for example, Swift and Kotlin, as well as a scalable database.
As an inspiration, you can consider the tech stack used by Spotify:
How can you make your music streaming app profitable?
Apart from offering the users what they want, there are two common ways of monetizing a music streaming app:
Monetization through in-app purchases and subscriptions enables companies to get revenue on a regular basis.
Similar to YouTube and Spotify, you can earn a good revenue via in-app advertising.
Prarthna Mathur