Spotify was founded in Stockholm in 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon and although the company's head office is now in London, much of its research and development remains in Stockholm. How Spotify built one of the best engineering cultures In 2009, a small group of employees at Spotify decided that in order to build the engineering culture they wanted, they would need to do things differently than most companies.
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
Spotify App Download For Pc
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.
- 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
How Spotify Work
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.