When you talk about the finest music-streaming app for iOS, “Spotify Music” is the one name that instantly strikes the mind. Not for nothing, it’s rated as the number one music app in the world. You can search for any tracks, artists and start listening to them. Price: Free / $9.99 per month Spotify is one of the obvious choices when leaving YouTube Music or Google Play Music. It’s the largest music streaming app out there. You can also listen to on-demand.
- Spotify Free The world's most popular streaming service, in a free version Quality: 160kbps, 96Kbps for mobile device users Files: MP3, M4P, MP4.
- Spotify recently reported it has 271 million active users, which makes it the most popular music streaming service by several orders of magnitude.One of the reasons it’s so appealing is that the.
Did you ever think about what would life be without music? Well, there are too many definitions of music that cannot be defined in a single word. Music is something that we are all touched by. Music is something that can buoy your mood and fend off depression. Most of our days start with listening to music and end with the same. At home, morning walks, on the street with headphones, traveling, workplace and in the eternal waiting, the music is all around us.
In the last couple of decades, the music industry has grown up tremendously, all thanks to the new technology. Gone are the days when we managed to use Radio and Television to listen to music. And today, in the mobile-driven world, we all are known as the streaming generation that is using Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal and iTunes apps to listen to music that we love. The advent of new technology is also making it more of a competitive field for artists, musicians, and music companies.
There are various music streaming applications in the market that have dominated the scene. Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal and Pandora are the most popular music streaming mobile applications that allow users to listen to music directly from the cloud without downloading it. Some apps let you listen for free, while others charge for a premium account.
As per the Statista report, the digital music industry has earned revenue of USD 7.8 billion in 2016. And, it’s expected that it would touch $ 10,961 million in 2021.
Top Players of Music Streaming Apps Market
Let’s discuss the most popular music streaming application- Spotify.
What is Spotify?
Spotify is a Swedish based Audio Streaming Platform, which is ruling the music streaming digital market with over 140 million people worldwide. Over 50 million of them are handling premium account to access the full content. It has over 30 million songs or tracks in its library that can conveniently be listened to online without downloading them. Launched in 2008, this multi-billion app has greatly revolutionized the music streaming industry. The total revenue of the company is $5.98 billion (FY 2018), while the net profit is $88.65 million (FY 2018). Still, people don’t know how to make a music app for android.
How does Spotify work?
Spotify runs on all operating systems, including iOS, Android, Window and supported Smart TVs. Users can access their favorite tracks from over 30 million songs/tracks for free by signing or logging into the account. Basically, Spotify is offering a free and premium account that carries different properties. In the free account, you can’t download songs to listen in offline mode, and you will get unwanted ads while listening to music. However, premium accounts are unrestricted. The monthly subscription for a premium account costs $9.99. This price covers unlimited access to a huge vault of music.
Spotify offers the following plans
- Free subscription: Lets users listen to limited music with ads in between the music.
- Subsidized subscription: These plans include combined plans for families and student plans.
- Premium subscription: This plan unlocks various advanced features, and allows full access to contact.
You Can Consider The Following Features In Your Music Streaming App Like- Spotify
What makes Spotify the best music streaming app? Its eye-catching design and functionality make it better. Let’s discuss the features of the music streaming app.
- Registration: This is the essential feature if you are offering a premium account. You can ask your users for their information. To get into the mobile application and access the huge collection of free music, users need to create an account by providing basic information, including Name, Email ID, Mobile Number, and Age. By registering themselves, the users can unlock the advanced features of the mobile application.
- User Profile: In this section, users can provide their information to the admin. The user can also update their profile by making changes in their information. In the user profile, the users can set their music preferences.
- Discovery and Search: Discovery or search is what you are proving to your users of their choices. This is the essential feature that allows your users to find the songs or track of their choices. In this, users can search for the music by artists, songs, albums, podcasts or genre.
- Recommendation: This is the best way to connect with users. You can add this feature in your music streaming applications to recommend songs as per their searches. This feature will help to anticipate the user’s music choices and make recommendations based on the same.
- Social Sharing: It’s said that success comes through promotion. The social sharing feature plays an important role in the success of the business. By giving your listeners an option to share their favorite song, track, or playlist directly through WhatsApp, and Instagram Direct Message.
- Online and Offline Access: Online or offline content access is crucial to stay longer in the smart devices of your listeners. Offline access, this is the best feature that lets your listeners enjoy their favorite track or songs without any dependency on the internet connection. Online access will allow your listeners to access all the latest content with ease and even they can download the songs to access in offline mode.
Twitch Streaming App
- Creating Playlist: You are providing a platform to your listeners to enjoy the features of the music app. Thus, creating a playlist is what you are allowing your users to save or add their favorite songs in one place. The saved songs can be accessed directly or you can create a number of playlists according to your choice.
- Push Notification: Push notifications is not a must-have feature, but it’s a most useful feature through which you can amaze your listeners through amazing offers, recently added songs, discounts, and more.
- In-app Messages: In-app messaging is all about interacting with others through personal messages within the app itself.
Here Are 5 Methods That You Can’t Ignore To Develop An App Similar to the Spotify.
User Interface: There are various music streaming apps running in the market. Some of them are doing well while some are not. Are you serious about your music streaming app? Then you need to focus on uniqueness. User Interface, it’s the main point where the users interact with the design. You should consider a gesture-based 3D design interface with bodily motions.
Platforms: You can build and run your music streaming app for one platform of your choice, if you are getting a huge response from the listeners then you can choose other platforms- mobile and web. Do you know? Spotify has started its journey with a web-based platform. After a few years, they launched a mobile application for both Android and iOS.
Uses of Devices:
Copyright & Legality: Licensing & Copyright, it’s the most important aspect that you need to consider while music streaming app development like Spotify. Remember your music content should be legal or licensed. It’s a so-called legitimate environment where you need to follow the rules to provide your music streaming services. In the United States, it can be handled by one of three agencies- The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) or Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI). Whereas, if you want to provide streaming music services in Europe, then you have to get approval from the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (SESAC). Moreover, a particular share will have to be paid to artists, bands or musicians for using their content or music.
Monetization: Applying monetization models will help you earn massive revenue from the music streaming application. In the music industry market, most apps of this type rely on various monetization models. Provide your listeners with free access to your music streaming service. In the subscription-based monetization model, allow your customers who wish to download music of their choices.
Data Storage: Data storage, it’s also a matter of concern, you have to focus on data storage, where a large amount of content will be stored. For this, you can consider such services as Amazon S3 bucket, and Google Cloud Storage. The mobile app developers keep focussing on cloud storage because thousands of requests hit per second.
Business Model Canvas for a Spotify-like app
Technologies (Language & Framework)
- Platforms: Android and iOS
- Web: PHP, CSS3, HTML5, JavaScript, JQuery
- Hosting: Amazon Cloud
Music Streaming Architecture
Technology That You Can Use To Perform Varieties of Task
- Twilio – for Push Notifications
- Cloud Environment – AWS, Google, Azure
- Amazon S3-For Data Backup
- Google & Facebook SDK– For Social Login
- Stripe, Braintree, PayPal- For Secure Payment Integration
- Nexmo – for SMS, voice and phone verification
How Much Does It Cost To Develop A Music Streaming App Like- Spotify
How can one start developing? Take a look at the factors or certain things that we have discussed above. These factors are very useful and help you if you are serious about your music streaming app idea. The success of Spotify has encouraged several app developers, music streaming app development companies or startups around the world to build a similar app like Spotify and replicate this success.
The development cost of developing music streaming app like Spotify is based on various factors. Whether it’s development, marketing or licensing. Any music streaming app development company or mobile app developer can’t come with the exact cost. The total cost of music mobile app development depends on the features, design, technology, and platforms.
There are various music app development companies in the market the charge per hour basis. Thus, locations also matter, the cost of app development also depends on the locations as of where the app is being developed. Cost comparison of app development in details. Such as,
- US-based companies or developers cost- $150-$250, excluding QA.
- Western Europe based companies or developers cost- $100-$180, excluding QA
- Eastern Europe based companies or developers cost- $130-$210, excluding QA
- India based companies or developers cost- $20-40$, including QA.
The expected development cost of the Spotify clone app is around $25000 for Android and $35000 for Android and $15000 for the website.
Want to create a music streaming app? Feel free to contact us and share your idea.
Everyone likes music. The tempo of life is getting faster and faster. Often there's no time to go through an entire list of music tracks and purchase the ones you like. Fortunately, audio streaming applications have changed the way we listen to music.
With modern technologies, we get effortless user experience and receive music in a matter of clicks. Mobile devices and a stellar speed Internet connection only compliment this trend.
If you want to learn more about music streaming apps or create a music app, this article is right for you. Below, we share the music streaming market statistics, song streaming app monetization strategies, and how to make a music app like Spotify.
Read on!
5 Steps to create an app like Spotify
Step 1. Consider the main Spotify-like app features
A music streaming app includes such features as registration and signing up, music organizing, music discovery, social sharing, push notifications, and music library.
Step 2. Choose licensing type
As for Spotify, the platform has two types of licenses including Sound Recording License Agreement and Musical Composition License Agreement.
Step 3. Find music app developers
Choose a team that will build an app like Spotify for you. There are a lot of factors for you to consider. You also should check the portfolio of your music application development company.
Step 4. Develop an audio streaming app UI/UX design
Now, you and your development team should agree on how the future app will look. For that, you need to create an app Wireframe, Mockup, and Prototype.
Step 5. Create audio streaming app MVP
At this stage, you will decide on your MVP (minimum viable product), and all the other details with your development team and you are ready to go.
Why consider music streaming
If we're talking about music services - there are typical online radio stations and music streaming services, like Spotify. That's how people enjoy quality, easy-accessible sound spots.
What's more, people globally shift to their mobile devices to do pretty much anything. Phone calls only use a fraction of the time people spend on their cell phones.
But there is more!
- The global music streaming market is growing steadily — the global subscriber base is expected to reach 2.81 billion by the end of 2025.
[Image source: Goodwater]
- Music Streaming Application Market is expected to reach $17.50 Billion by 2025
- Statista said 14% of the population use paid music streaming services several times a day.
[Image source: RIAA]
- There are 186.7 million digital music users in the U.S.
- Spotify has over 200 million active users, more than 109 million paid subscribers, and about 40% of the global music streaming market
Did I mention that 72% of Spotify users are millennials, who, it seems, were born with mobiles in their hands?
Driven by advantageous technologies, the music streaming industry continues to grow. Spotify mini player on mac. Therefore, the development of your live audio streaming app might be a great idea.
Current Leaders of the Sound Streaming Market
There are three leaders in the sound streaming market, including
- Spotify with 36% market share
- Apple Music with 19%
- Amazon Music counting 12% market share
Now, let us take a closer look at each of them.
[Image source: MIDA]
Spotify
Being a pioneer in the music-streaming market, Spotify is the best-known music app. The app has 109 million premium subscribers and 232 million monthly active users.
App users receive access to different music services. They include Discover Weekly playlists and experimental ones, like the Australia-only station.
Spotify has Facebook integration, which allows users to share with their Facebook friends. Besides, this feature enables Spotify users to share their music easier than competitors.
[Example of Spotify interface]
Apple Music
Apple Music is the second most popular music streaming app. It provides users with plenty of features and a discount for families and students. In June 2019, Apple Music had over 60 million paid subscribers, and 50 million songs in the library. All Apple devices, including Apple HomePod, are compatible with this app. Still, unlike Spotify, the app does not have robust sharing options.
[Example of Apple Music interface]
Amazon Music Unlimited
Amazon Music is an advanced version of Amazon Prime Music, provided to Prime subscribers for free. For an extra payment, users receive access to an expanded catalog. Amazon Music recommends playlists grouped around artists the user already listened to. Also, the app shows the song lyrics on the 'now playing' screen.
[Example of Amazon Music interface]
To conclude, Spotify is not alone in this online music thing. Other significant players are Apple Music and Amazon Music.
All music streaming services have a lot of benefits, including:
- Quick access to music
- Affordability
- Unlimited storage
- Social engagement
As you can see, all these services appear to be outstanding because of these common features- they are effortless, intuitive, and easy to use.
The Killer Idea Behind Spotify
To give you a clear idea of how to start a music streaming service, let's discover the inner logic behind Spotify.
- Spotify stores music on various servers
- To stream a random track on your mobile, Spotify finds it on one of the millions of servers and sends it to your device
- Servers, in this case, are computers and all other gadgets of Spotify's subscribers
This concept is more effective than hitting servers with requests to download the track. At the same time, you become an essential link for the global social music sharing network, which is engaging too. And, it enables users to listen to all this music legally by paying royalties to authors.
Now, let's learn how to build a music streaming app and make it profitable.
How to Make Money with a Spotify-Like App
Music streaming services, like Spotify, have two main ways of earning; premium account and running ads. Let's check how Spotify applies these strategies.
[Image source: Statista]
Premium Services
The premium Spotify account provides users with free access to unlimited music across other devices. Besides, the app allows temporary downloading of songs for offline access and plays the highest quality music. There are several types of paid plans, including:
- Student plan cost $4.99 per month
- Regular account - $9.99 per month
- Family account - $14.99 a month
Ad-supported Services
App users with a free account can listen to a limited among of songs on demand, which may be interrupted by an advertisement. By using this business model, Spotify charges advertisers a cost-per-click and cost per mile fee.
According to their site, Spotify spends a significant chunk of money to pay royalty rewards to artists.
[Image source: Statista]
Read also: How Do Apps Make Money?
This concludes how to earn with your Spotify clone. You have to become a part of 'back to paid music' preachers, deal with authors and provide your users with a good deal of music value for their membership.
Critical Features to Include in a Spotify-Like App
If you are looking for ideas on how to make an app like Spotify, consider the following app features:
Registration / signing up
First, a user should be authorized to use your system. Users can register in Spotify via email or social media like Facebook.
Make sure you take this step very effortless for users. Connect it to social media and you get new subscribers in a matter of taps.
Music organizing
The app should provide features of grouping one's music, etc.
So, users can create playlists for different purposes, like current activities and genres.
Music Discovery
To motivate users to engage with your app more often, you need to provide them with personalized content. And here is where Spotify has a great competitive advantage over other services.
Spotify uses an AI-based recommendation algorithm that selects songs for the Discover Weekly section. Spotify developers created their own powerful discovery engine.
Let us check how it works.
For Weekly Discovery recommendation, Spotify uses three types of recommendation models, including:
- User crossovers with the listening history of other users
- Natural language processing. In Spotify, this technology works on the Echo Nest API. It learns about the music genres by analyzing the text and looking at similar terms associated with the artist across the Internet. Kafka manages the data in real-time.
- Deep learning to analyzes the raw tracks. For this, Spotify applies' convolution neural network.' This deep neural network learns from experience using only raw data input.
All things social
This feature allows users to share songs with friends and highlight favorite tracks on a social feed. It's also going to serve your app with a good deal of word-of-mouth advertising at the same time.
Read also: How To Develop a Social Media App?
Push notifications
Push notification is a deciding feature for such a social community based on follow-ups and spreading content. People want news from their favorite sources; that's how it works now - users wish to have valuable personalized benefits from your service.
Music Library
Unfortunately, this feature is absent in Spotify. Because of this, users can not host or upload their tracks and create a music library. The only option is to create personal playlists and subscribe to music channels created by other users.
At the same time, this feature is available in Apple Music. It allows users to add and synchronize songs on their devices and in-app playlists. Users can store a certain amount of songs on their app for free or upgrade to a premium plan.
To give you a clue of how to make a music app, and even better app than Spotify, consider this function as well.
Now, let's find out, how to build a music app.
Where to Start: Your Guide to Making a Music App like Spotify
Now, let's dig deeper into the process of music streaming app development. Below, we share a step-by-step guide on how to make a music streaming app, together with cost estimations.
Check this out.
Ideas are everything
For music app development, you need to specify the whole concept of the app. In order to do this, find a similar application, and of course, think of something that makes your app special.
Licensing
When developing a music streaming service, you need to get a license to provide your subscribers with legal audio content.
As for Spotify, the platform has two types of licenses for music distribution, such as:
- Sound Recording License Agreement, covering recording rights. Spotify uses licenses received from the big three record labels - Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment Group, and Warner Music Group.
- Musical Composition License Agreement. This covers the rightful owners of the songs, managed through two main firms in the U.S.-BMI and ASCAP.
When looking for an answer on how to make your own music app, do not forget to get such a license.
Find music app developers
Now it's time to come to the actual work and choose a team that will build an app like Spotify for you. There are a lot of factors for you to consider. To estimate how much it costs to develop a music app like Spotify, check developer rates among regions:
- USA/Canada-based dev teams - $50 to $250/hour
- Western Europe - $30 to$170/hour
- Eastern Europe - $25 to $150/hour
- Australia - $50 to $150/hour
- India - $10 to $80/hour
You also should check the portfolio of your music application development company. From the beginning, communicate with your team to make sure you're on the same track. At the APP Solutions, we usually hold meetings with our clients on a regular basis via Skype.
See also: How to Outsource App Development?
Plan & Estimate
This market has significant potential, but that's not enough to run and spend all you have for a killer application. You need to run a study and learn about your target audiences' preferences. Then, communicate your business idea to your development team. The team will come up with some technological solutions, cost estimation, and project requirements.
Develop an audio streaming app
![Spotify Spotify](/uploads/1/3/4/1/134164054/657426675.png)
UI/UX design
Now, you and your development team should agree on how the future app will look. Here, you can offer the design team some ideas, if you have them.
The necessary process of the music app design creating includes the following stages.
- Wireframe. The team will create a black and white app that shows the general concept of the app.
- Mockup. The team develops colorful but static screens of the future app. Mockups include icon design, button shapes, spaces, etc.
- Prototype. The team creates an interactive model of the app that shows how the app acts. As a rule, prototypes give you an option to tap, swap, drag, and see the result.
Choose tech stack
To develop your Spotify-like app, consider Spotify developer tools, like Python and JavaScript. Besides, Spotify uses PHP for the server-side and Java for back-end structure. As we said, Spotify stores all the music files on the device cache. For this, use Cassandra, PostgreSQL, as well as a general memory caching system.
When looking for a clue on how to create a music streaming service, take into account that Spotify uses the following technologies:
- Kafka software for real-time data management and processing
- GraphWalker for model-based tests and Python integration
- Amazon S3 for cloud-based music streaming
- Dataproc for platform infrastructure
- Chromium embedded framework for building UI for desktop application
- Bootstrap for web app development
- Nginx as open-source HTTP and proxy server
- C++ for Windows/Mac clients
- Java for Android music streaming app
- Objective-C for iOS music streaming app
How to make a music streaming website?
You can empower your app with Spotify players by integrating Spotify player SDK. This library contains classes to stream management and audio playback. It takes on all the negotiation with Spotify's back-end, digital rights management, and decoding.
[Spotnews screens]
We did such integration for our recent project, SpotNews. SpotNews is an audio streaming platform that provides personalized music content. The idea behind the app is to allow users to listen to their favorite songs while reading the news sections.
We also used: Download spotify from laptop to tablet computer.
- Spotify SDK for authorization via the Spotify user profile
- Java Android SDK, Retrofit, Fresco, Crashlytics, and Realm to provide smooth app performance
- PHP, Silex, MySQL, Composer HTML5, CSS3, Twitter BootStrap, Jquery, Bower, Less, Nginx to moderate the news feeds via the Admin Panel
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Create audio streaming app MVP
At this stage, you will decide on your MVP (minimum viable product), and all the other details with your development team and you are ready to go.
When looking for ideas on how to create a music app, consider the following features for your music streaming app MVP:
Integrations | Estimation in hours | |
Registration / signing up |
| From 32 hours |
Profile user |
| From 36 hours |
Social Share | From 15 hours | |
https://vwngocq.weebly.com/blog/mac-dre-spotify. Personalization | Pick-up algorithm that will choose the next music track for each individual user. Use ML to find appropriate songs for users | From 100 hours |
Music player |
| 70 |
Track search |
| From 32 hours |
Playlist manager |
| From 60 hours |
Total | From 345 hours |
Streamlabs Obs
The average development cost of a music streaming app like Spotify is about $40-50K per platform.
For a more detailed estimation, you can use our project cost calculator. Now you know how to create a music app like Spotify.
Spotify Free Music App
You might also like: HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO MAKE AN APP?
Take it to the test
After the application is ready, the team does in-depth testing to ensure the app runs smoothly. We usually implement it right after the app is prepared and approved. Plus, three months after release our developers can fix any issues occurred for free.
Wrapping up
The music streaming app market is growing, and its revenue is expected to reach $17.50 Billion by 2025.
![Like Like](/uploads/1/3/4/1/134164054/218204260.jpg)
Spotify is the leader among music streaming apps. It uses a raft of modern technologies to provide users with relevant music content.
While music streaming is a hot trend, you have a chance to get your share of the music streaming market, as Spotify did.
But, to achieve success with your app, and be ahead of competitors, you need to get started asap.
The last thing that remains is to find a development team. And we are here to help.