Music is more like a companion that follows you in times of trouble, contentment and even confusion. Where some depend on it to break through procrastination others relies on it as a source of encouragement and motivation. The music industry is expanding massively intriguing prominent platforms that continue to entertain listeners globally with innovative strategies. The blog covers aspects to create a music streaming app like Spotify. You can find the cost breakdown and learn about the app development process to build a music streaming app. Read on!

Revenue In Music Streaming Market

According to Statista, in the Music streaming industry, the listener count is expected to reach up to 913.2m by 2025. The penetration of the industry is increasing at a rate of 8.4% in 2021 and is expected to go up to 11.7% by 2025.

Apart from this, the music streaming forecast shows two different contribution- the on-demand streaming and live streaming. It has been observed that the on-demand streaming has contributed greatly to the industry up to $9,003.7 million in 2019. The music streaming app industry is expected to forecasted to reach $17.50 Billion by 2025

About Spotify

Spotify is one of the biggest on-demand music streaming platforms with millions of tracks and prominent albums on it. The music libraries of the four biggest music labels of the world are present on it. Almost 87% of the content is readily available to stream. It was launched back in 2008 and soon partner shipped with Facebook. It has nearly 109 million premium subscribers along with 232 million active users.  It contributed a lot to its massive success. The advanced features and ease in functionality added more to the widespread reach and soon thousands of users got on the platform.

Market Capitalization of Spotify

Spotify stands on a market cap of about $44.87 Billion as of September 2021. The platform has gained 430th position in the world record of being the most profitable firm. Here is a look into its market value for the last three years.

How Much Does It Cost to Develop an App Like Spotify?

Considering the massive potential in the industry its high time you plan on developing an app like Spotify. To do that you need to go through the three different phases as mentioned below:

• The Pre-Development Phase
• The Development Phase
• The Post Development Phase

Let’s learn about the cost and details of the three different processes involved in developing a music streaming app.

The Pre-Development Phase of a Music Streaming App Like Spotify

The pre-development phase revolves around market study, strategy making, interface designs and its prototypes and other necessities involved in creating a foundation for your music streaming app.

Planning And Strategy Making

You need to carry out detailed market research to know the pain points of the users. You sure would want to create a better version of your app and to do that look into the customer feedback and learn about the areas of concern. Once done, you have to define the scope and other technicalities.

Market Research Cost & Duration

The entire work involved in the strategy making and planning phase required an average of 20 hours. Now here are the complete cost details with respect to the region you choose to get your app developed from and the duration involved.

Finding Developers/Company

When you plan to develop an app your first concern is to hunt a competent developer or a firm that is notable of developing such high-performance app. Spotify with its millions of users operate on many elements, high speed, intuitive interface and a huge backup storage. To give a competition to such an app you need the same level of support as well. There are mainly four prominent regions of app development industry- USA, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia. Here is a depiction of the market demand.

App Development Company Charges

Average charges of an app development company to create a medium level music streaming app is between $5,000 to $10,000. However, the far changes depending upon the regions.

• USA– $267,000 to $360,000
• Western Europe- $210,000 to $300,000
• Eastern Europe- $140,000
• Asia– $100,000

App Developers Chargers Per Hour

The rate of freelance app developers to create an app like Spotify with respect to regions are listed below:

• USA– $178 per hour
• Western Europe $118 per hour
• Eastern Europe- $100 per hour
• Asia– $35 per hour

App Development Platform

The next important step is to look for the right development platform. The easiest way is to build a native IOS app and a native Android version of your app. Whatever platform you choose, Spotify’s SDK supports both of them.

Cost of App Development Platforms

• Cost of Native IOS App starts at $20,000 & reach to $150,000
• Cost of Native Android App starts at starts $15,000 and reaches to $170,000

UI/UX of the Music App

The user interface of your music streaming app needs to be intuitive. It should have minimalistic graphics to keep the users engaged. All the features including the search option to the layout to the button placements should be accurate.

Cost of UI/UX of the Music App

The cost to create the UI/UX of your app depends on the specifications. The richer your interface is the higher would be the cost.

The cost of a cross-platform app with all the modern features, including the third-party integration is around $25,000 to $30,000. Whereas the cost for a simplistic layout is around $15,000 to $25,000.

Music Streaming Licensing

You cannot share and upload anyone’s composition without seeking their permission. To develop an app so big you have to go through all the legal formalities as well. One big thing is to get legal permission to share the albums, music libraries and compositions of artists from every corner of the world. For that, you need to acquire the Public Performance Rights license. You have to pay the artist and the royalty plans to get access to upload whatever music they allow.

Cost of Music Streaming License

The BMI business license to stream music is between $400 and $250 per year. In this license, you can get a certain number of tracks and albums. The amount can go greater than $2000 depending upon your request.

The Development Phase to Create an App Like Spotify

You have now entered into the massive and the most important section of your app development process. Here you will learn about the different technicalities including the backend programming, features and other aspects that are involved in development. Both the backend and frontend will be covered here.

Technical Architecture

To make sure that your platform performs the finest on desktop and in the mobile version you have to make use of the cutting-edge app development tools like Cassandra and PostgreSQL. For the main framework, it’s best to stick to JavaScript and Python. Some other technicalities are listed down below:

Cloud Storage

Use cloud storage service providers like Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage or Azure. These service providers can handle millions of requests per second without causing any delays.

Monetization

Ensure to add app monetization to have an added source of revenue generation. You can add different formats that are intuitive and engaging for the users.

Video/Audio Transcoding

You have to transcode the media files in multiple media formats at the backend server of your app to enable the media to be played on major platforms. You can use software like FFMPEG which is an open-source tool or get help from Amazon elastic transcoder.

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)

You need to integrate a high-performance CDN that can help users stream music easily and effortlessly. To do that you may need to configure with Amazon cloud front, a cloud streaming platform.

Player Configuration

PHP is used to some extent to integrate player configuration. The feature enables the app to perform at the internet speed of the user.

Media Server Configuration

With this configuration your app will support all browsers and the media will support the device configurations.

Cost Of Backend Technologies

The backend development cost of a normal or simple app with basic functionality ranges between $40,000 to $60,000, whereas a medium functionality app cost between $61,000 and $120,000. If you want to go for a highly complex and well-integrated app the price bracket starts from $120,000.

Front-End App Development

The front-end development of your app involves two categories if you want to create an app like Spotify. The first one is of the basic features followed by the advanced features list.

Basic Features of Spotify

To know how much does music streaming app like Spotify cost you have to learn about its basic features first and the individual costs.

·         Authentification

Your app like Spotify should offer a user-sign up option. With the account creation feature, you can let users easily create a personal music playlist. They will get recommendations based on their preferences.

·         Music Streaming Search Box

The next option is to offer them integrated music streaming search box. They can type in the name and discover the music seamlessly.

·         Music Sharing

There should be options to share music with their followers or friends on Instagram, Facebook etc. to increase followers and views. It helps create a social network of the music library.

·         Playlists

Users should be given the option o create playlists. They should be able to tag a title on them as well and classify them as per their taste and preferences.

·         Offline Mode

Spotify offers users an easy solution to enjoy music without there a need for an internet connection. With the integration of an offline mode, the app users will be increased.

Cost Of Basic Features

The cost breakdown for the basic features is listed below:

Advanced Features of Spotify

Spotify stands out for the innovative features that make it easier for the users to entertain through it. The features are carefully planned to provide ease and seamlessness. In order to create similar music streaming app with better and enhanced functionality, you need to integrate the below-mentioned app features.

·         Music Organizing

The feature lets the users organize the music lists. They can categorize on the basis of genres, activities and artists.

·         Music Discovery

The music discovery feature has been improvised hugely in Spotify. It corresponds with the listening history of the user, language preferences and genre.

·         The Personalized Dashboard

Every user upon creating the account gets a personalized dashboard. They can add their desired music to the playlist but the AI bots keep observing their behavior and activities, based on which the entire app experience is changed. That’s the kind of connectivity you need to provide.

·         Social Media Integration

You need to offer easy integration into social media profiles for your users to log in and to share music easily. It will help in spreading the word-of-mouth advertising as well.

·         Push Notifications

With push notifications, you awaken your app in the mind and packed routine of your user. You tell them about the latest updates and happening bringing them to using the app again.

Cost of Advanced Features

The cost breakdown for the advanced features is listed below:

The Post App Development Phase

Now that you have entered into the third and the last phase of your app like Spotify you have to ensure that it functions well and flawlessly. You need to check its functionality on multiple devices to ensure it operates at the fastest speed and offer an intuitive interface to the users.

·         App Security & Platform Testing

Developers take up to two to three weeks to test the performance of an app on multiple platforms and under different scenarios. The total cost involved is around $15,000 – $25,000 per test.

Conclusion

To create a music streaming app like Spotify you have to pay attention to all the aspects mentioned above. If you want to get an overall estimated price for a simple app its starts from $16,000. However, for a high-end app you have to plan to spend around $120,000.