How much does it cost to develop a music streaming application?

Generation x prefers tuning into their favorite playlists while traveling to work. This has been mainly possible through apps like Spotify where playlists can be created and accessed anytime to balance the mood.

Also, music streaming has become a habit these days that almost everyone is seen with their earphones plugged in along with humming to their favorite tracks. The fact that mobile app developers make music app needs to be considered in this case too.

Research conducted that revenue generation from music streaming apps shall contribute to around $8,916 million at the end of this year. The compounded annual growth rate of about 12.7% has been forecasted to reach up to a value of $10,691 million roughly, by 2021.

The music streaming application penetration of users is also expected to rise up to a value of around $29.4% by 2021.

FEATURES WHICH SHALL DERIVE THE COST OF STREAMING THE MUSIC APPLICATION:

#A ROBUST USER INTERFACE:

Just as the first impression makes the last impression, an attractive user interface does the same to a prospective user. Also, in this era of competition among mobile music player apps, it becomes necessary to keep the attention of a certain user to avoid deletion or a negative review on the respective app stores.

#THE CHALLENGE OF SIGNING IN OR REGISTERING:

Most music streaming apps fail to accomplish their user-friendliness at the time of signing up or registering. Either the Facebook logging in shows an error or Google does not support the registration for some of the music applications for its users. This then becomes prime for the mobile apps as users may put up a negative review and uninstall it from their devices.

#THE HOMEPAGE FOR THE MUSIC PLAYLIST:

Whether it is an expensive music app or a reasonable one, the homepage for its music playlist needs to be attractive in such a way that it increases the user engagement on to the particular app. Also, the functionality of the homepage should be dynamic so that a particular user enjoys listening to their favorite songs without any hassles.

There are some apps which failed at their homepage creativity that they were uninstalled and slammed with negative reviews on the App store as well as Google Play.

#SEARCH TOOLBAR ORIENTATION WITH MUSIC LIBRARIES:

This is yet another important factor when it comes to designing a music streaming app. The human mind is such that it fluctuates while listening to songs. Also, a particular user may not be satisfied with just one song. For this very reason, there is a requirement of a toolbar for searching new songs that have come up or old songs for bringing back the nostalgia.

#ENABLING THE SHARING OF MUSIC SOCIALLY:

Music sharing has become more of a habit these days rather than leisure. This option hence becomes compulsory for particular music streaming application. Even if music development cost fluctuates, the sharing option is commonly seen in various music applications so that the song tracks can be referred to every other user.

Also, posting the song tracks on social media has become a fad these days which turns into a parameter while downloading a particular music app.

#NOTIFICATIONS IN A PUSH WAY:

The push notification for soundtracks is mandatory as there may be a limit to the user upon their particular usage for song streaming. As nothing comes free of cost, this feature does not come free of any charges. It is mandatory for almost every app.

This feature also comes in handy when a particular soundtrack may not be available in the playlist or the library altogether for user access.

#OFFLINE MODE FOR PLAYING MUSIC:

Online mode for streaming music may not be possible for users at all times. This may be due to network fluctuations and other related reasons. For enabling a seamless experience offline, there are certain requirements at the backend which shall help in doing so like storing for later with the help of Amazon S3. The ‘gaana’ developerAPI is based on the same framework for offline music.

#THE CHALLENGE OF BITRATE:

Bitrate is the skeletal structure which supports the playing of music online without the hassle of buffering. As music files are easy to stream as compared to that of videos, the bitrate feature comes in handy and helps users enjoy their music seamlessly. The bitrate generally does not come in the suite for its developer and has to be downloaded externally for breaking large sized data into bits. This is one more reason why music streaming apps are preferred more by people.

#FORMAT FOR SOUNDTRACKS:

People might think why MP3 is the most obvious choice for formatting soundtracks, it is because other formats may be faster but are unable to handle a large number of data for processing. Also, MP3 is versatile enough to perform up to an optimum level of 128 kilobytes per second as well as 320 kilobytes per second. MP3 is also the format which is compatible with operating systems and gadgets.

There are apps similar to Spotify which have both the settings attached for all kinds of users. It can be Spotify or gaana which make use of the MP3 versions of music for all users.

#CUSTOMIZATION OF THE APP FOR USERS:

The music streaming app cannot be kept standardized for all kind of users in a way that each user may not have the choice for the same playlist. Songs like food differ from user to user and hence the personal touch to every user shall be provided. Song suggestion for users according to their playlist selection is one example of such a feature.

If rock music is liked by a certain user then the next suggestion shall be of a similar song and not just any random genre of songs.

#OTHER FEATURES:

Apart from these standard features, there are some of the other features which need to be included in a particular music streaming app. Some of these are

• Provision of links for booking tickets for music concerts or related events
• Feature of a schedule for musical events
• Support features through a virtual assistant like a chatbot
• The functionality of the radio where the most liked songs by the user may be enjoyed
• The feature of marking a particular song as a favorite

These features distinguish a particular streaming app which is most preferred by a certain user for enjoying their favorite music.

Here are also some of the operating systems which users choose for downloading music streaming applications.

• APPLE MUSIC

This particular music streaming app has approximately 40.7 million users who enjoy their music. It implies that the net reach of this particular app globally comes up to around 19% along with stickiness. There are about 12 sessions every month for each user. Also, the number of users for smartphones range up to around 36.9 million and for tablets, it comes to about 77 million.

• PANDORA RADIO

The user population for Pandora comes to about an approximate of 32.6 million for mobiles. This indicates that the net reach of such an app for its users comes to around 15% with about 21% of stickiness. Music streaming sessions for this particular app go up to almost 23 every month for every user. The sum of the users for smartphones comes to around 26.4 million, for tablets, it is about 4.6 million, and for mobile users, it amounts to about 28.6 million.

• SPOTIFY

Every month almost 30.4 million users subscribe for such music streaming application and enjoy their favorite playlists through it. Also, the net reach for this particular app is around 14% along with a stickiness of around 25%. Users stream music through this app with around 51 sessions each. However, this particular app has roughly 19.1million of smartphone users, about 4.1 million tablet users, and around 16.8% of mobile users.

• IHEART RADIO

About 28.5 million users also have subscribed to this particular music streaming app to enjoy music to their heart’s content. As a result, the net reach of this particular app comes to around 13% globally with a stickiness of roughly 15%. Although the user percentage is low for this very application, there are almost 13 sessions occurring for every user every month.

• SOUNDCLOUD

This is one of the oldest music streaming applications which has around 25.7 million users globally. With this, the net reach of this application comes to around 12% with an equivalent percentage of stickiness. However, the sessions per month for every user have come down to 9. The amount of users globally is around 15.4 million for smartphones, about 3.8 million tablet users, and almost 17.7 million mobile users.

Apart from these, there also other music streaming apps which are used by people for tuning in to their favorite track like Shazam, Amazon Music, Google Play Music, Tune In radio, and Slacker Radio.

There are also some requirements at the backend for supporting such apps and all the related features:

• The usage of software known as Kafka for supporting the real-time functioning of music streaming
• Python integration for services related to coding as well as beta testing with the help of Graph Walker
• For building up the primary app structure, a particular developer shall make use of tools either like Google cloud or others like Dataproc
• Some music streaming applications also have a desktop user interface. For such an application, the embedding of Chromium is highly suggested
• The use of Bootstrap is also suggested for the use of websites for mobile streaming
• Open source tools such as Nginx for either a proxy server or the HTTP is highly recommended as it is easy for the developers.

CONCLUSION

When a question arises of ‘‘How to make music app with the required estimates of costs?’’, then the answer to this is that due to technicalities like licensing and music intelligence algorithm the current rate which has been standardized is about $30 – $40 per hour for a particular developer. This includes the prices for user interfaces as well as for testing.

The cost to make a music app also differs from country to country. In the US, the charges set by various app development firms are from around $50 -$250 for developers per hour. Also, for countries in Western Europe, the charges have been set to about $30 – $170 which is comparatively cheaper to that of the US. The charges for Eastern Europe have been set to around $20 – $150.

With all these costs a rough estimate for developing an app for music streaming shall be around $22,000 for Android users and $30,000 for those using Apple.

This article is originally published on 21Twelve Interactive’s Blog Page.