While drafting this “how to start a music app” read, I was listening to Hans Zimmer’s The Last Samurai soundtrack on Apple Music. I just then realized this wouldn’t have been possible a decade or so earlier! Truth being said, with a lot of new music streaming apps on the rise, the way we listen to music has been redefined now!
As of 2021, there is a lot of well-known music streaming apps like Apple Music, SoundCloud, Spotify, Pandora and more. And this is how people are like nowadays!
Anyways, let’s get into the topic! You’re here to know how to create a music streaming service like SoundCloud. And one of the reasons could be you coming across how lucrative the music streaming industry is!
Well, you’re right! Planning to create your own music streaming app is a great decision today and you ending up here is the first step!
By the end of this read, you’ll know how to set up a music streaming service, the music streaming market insights, the multiple monetization models and more (what I’ve listed here is only a glimpse of what this read holds for you)!
That said, let’s get started with the music streaming app market insights and then proceed (if you’re thinking why you should start your own music streaming service in the first place, this section right here is the answer for you)!
An Overview of the Music Streaming App Market
One main reason why music streaming applications have become so popular is their accessibility and features! Long gone are the days when people had to stick to gramophones or carry around walkman sets! Today, everything is delivered via the cloud and a bunch of music streaming apps – you simply search for a song, select it and play it!
Here are some statistics from the music streaming app market that’ll make you go wild!
- The Worldwide Music Streaming Market is expected to grow rapidly and reach $60.5 billion during the year 2026.
- Big players like Spotify have over 165 million paid subscribers and generated a revenue of 7.88 billion euros during 2020. And by the time Apple Music launched, Spotify already had 22 million subscribers on board.
- Apple Music, on the other hand, generated a $4.1 billion revenue during June 2020 and had 72 million subscribers by then.
- In May 2021, the Spotify music streaming Android app was downloaded 8.84 million times. And SoundCloud had 2.49 million downloads during the same period.
- Industry experts say that Amazon Music is fast growing and has the potential to surpass Spotify in the upcoming years!
Interesting Fact: The reason why Spotify is so popular and has a huge user base is that it was started way earlier than other music streaming services. Daniel Ek Martin launched Spotify on April 23rd, 2006. And at that time, Steve Jobs, the Apple CEO did not want to build a music streaming service! So, Spotify simply had no competitors and grew huge!
So, that’s it with the music streaming service market statistics! And I believe now you have the answer as to why you should create a music streaming app today! Now that we’re done here, we’ll start looking at how you should create your own music streaming app. But before that, there are few things you should take into consideration!
How To Make an Online Music Streaming App?
The answer is going to be pretty much straight (and in two ways)!
- Building your SoundCloud like music streaming app from scratch
- Using a SoundCloud-like audio streaming script
We’ll start in the order mentioned above!
Building Your Music Streaming App from Scratch
So, like I already said, this is where you build your own music streaming app/service from scratch. You’ll have to build each component and functionality from scratch. We’ll go step-by-step so that you can have a better understanding of the process.
Note: If you’re to go with this method, you’ll be needing plenty of time (a couple of months) and thousands of dollars. Or you can simply head to the next method where you create your own music streaming app using a SoundCloud script.
Step 1: Choose the Platform for Your Music Streaming App
iOS? Android? You’ve got to answer that!
But if you’re looking for a bit of advice, I’d say go for both! Build a music streaming app for Android and make sure that the same music streaming app is built for iOS as well!
Why?
As of now, there are more than 2.8 billion people using an Android handset. And more than 1 billion active iPhone users. So, it’s best if you build a music streaming app that works on both platforms. Sure the costs are going to go up (and we have an effective solution for that) but you don’t want to miss the billion-plus users, do you?
Step 2: Decide What Features Your Music Streaming App Should Have
No chit-chat! Let’s quickly look at the features your music streaming app should have!
Registration / Sign Up ProcessThe first impression is always going to make a lot of decisions! And you’ve got to make sure that the registration process is as simple as possible!
Instead of asking your users to enter their personal information manually, you can include the social media login feature where users can log in using their Googe or Facebook logins. This helps save huge time for the users and creates a positive experience.
Music Search
What good is your music streaming app/service if the user is not able to find what he wants! Make sure your music streaming app users are able to find the tracks they want to hear using multiple search options. They should be able to find music by
- Artist
- Album
- Title
- Genre
- Movie name and more.
Sophisticated, Clean Music Player
A sophisticated music player doesn’t mean you have to add animations and effects! The user should be able to carry out the basic features like adding the song to their favorites, setting loop mode for songs, the pause and play buttons and more.
Also, adding a lyric section to your base music player and the recently played tracks would be a nice touch!
Managing Music
Here comes the most important feature of your music streaming app – managing the music! App users should be able to create a new playlist, add tracks to them, rename and share it via social media.
Admin Panel
This is also one of the most important parts of the music streaming app (from the keeper’s point of view)! This is where you’ll be taking care of the subscriptions, managing playlists, and other functions on the platform.
Offline Access
This is a must in a music streaming app these days! Some users might hate the idea of having their internet connection turned on when they want to listen to music in peace. They just hate notifications from other apps!
And the offline access would not only allow them to download the songs they want but also listen to music in peace! Make sure your music streaming app has this feature!
Monetization Model
Decide how you are going to make money with your music streaming service! The most common monetization methods are,
- Subscription model
- Banner Ads
Having both on your music streaming app can help you earn good revenue in the long run plus, it’s always good to have multiple monetization models!
Common App Settings
This would include the app settings like auto-download feature, music sync across multiple devices you log in, the profile settings and more.
Step 3: Licensing Agreements
You simply cannot start adding tracks to your music streaming service just like that! You’d end up paying a hefty amount of money as fine!
You’ll be needing a license to cover the owners of the songs and a license to cover the recording rights. In the United States, you can contact either the Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) or The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) to get this done. If you’re planning to stream music in the European Regions, you’ve got to get in touch with the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (SESAC).
Similarly, find out the respective boards in countries where you want to stream music. Make sure that you get the licensing agreements simultaneously when you are creating an audio streaming app!
Once licensing is done, next comes the UI/UX part!
Step 4: UI/UX Design
User experience is the most important factor for any business to grow. Be it a music streaming service or any other service, the end-user should scream “Gosh! Am not going to switch to any other alternatives forever!”
It’s important that you give extra focus to this part because a clean experience is considered mandatory if you want to retain your platform users. Make sure your music streaming app gives users a clean experience.
Quick Tip: Keep in mind the most important things your platform users would often need – make sure they are kept in immediate reach.
Step 5: Testing
When you reach this step, pat yourself on the back! Because putting a team together and accomplishing all the above-mentioned steps takes a minimum of at least one to two months!
And this is where you make sure everything that has been built works right!
Test your music streaming app a thousand times if needed to make sure it is glitch-free!
Because the last thing you want is your platform user waiting several minutes just for a song to start playing!
Step 6: Launching the App on Respective Store
Once you are done with the testing and your music streaming app is ready to go live, it’s time you launch it in the respective platform store! For iOS, it’s App Store and for Android, it’s Playstore.
The app might take around 90 days to get approved provided it meets all the regulations. If not, it’s going to be another 90 days for the next approval!
So, make sure you get it right the first time! And yes! Those mentioned are the steps to build a music streaming app from scratch!
Now, to the most-awaited question – What would be the final costs to build a music streaming app from scratch?
Here’s the answer to your question,
The total time taken to build a music streaming app from scratch (including the back-end) would be approximately 1400+ hours which is almost 2 months.
And the cost for the same would be around $70,000.
Note:
- The above-mentioned costs and time are only for one app platform – either Android or iOS. The costs would be double if you want to build a music streaming app for both Android and iOS.
- North American-based developers charge an approximate $100/month.
The Team You Need!
I guess I totally skipped this part! In order to create your own music streaming app from scratch, you need a team of experts to do this! You’ll be needing
- iOS/Android App Developers
- Business Analyst
- UI/UX Designer
- Back End Developers
- QA/ Testing Engineers
Clear with the building from scratch part? Let’s look at the better alternative now!
Building a Music Streaming App Using SoundCloud Script
Building a music streaming app like SoundCloud is way easier when you use an audio streaming script.
Why?
Because an audio streaming script is built solely with one purpose – to create a music streaming app/service.
When you go for readymade audio streaming scripts, everything you need is already in there! All you have to do is, plug and play!
To start with, you need to choose an audio screaming script. I strongly recommend you to go with StreamTunes – SoundCloud audio streaming script.
The audio streaming script has built-in features like,
- Membership Plan Features
- Artists and Album Tagging Feature
- Favorites and Adding Tracks to Queue
- Social Login Feature
- Banner Promotion
- Native Android & iOS Applications
- In-depth analytics dashboard
- Built-in Stripe Payment Gateway and more.
So, here are the steps when it comes to creating your own music streaming service with a SoundCloud clone script!
Step 1: Purchase StreamTunes audio streaming script.
Step 2: The special thing about choosing a SoundCloud clone script is that you get native Android & iOS mobile applications. The dedicated support team helps you out with customizing the application as per your wish – name, branding and stuff on both the applications.
Step 3: By this time, you would have got your licenses. Once you are done with the customization part, launch the application on App Store and Playstore to get approval.
Step 4: When the approval process is over, set payment gateways, create subscription plans, upload tracks and your music streaming app is all set to go live!
Note:
- Since the SoundCloud clone script is already tested, there’s no need to spend extensive time on testing.
- The script comes with all the built-in features mentioned above. This should save you from deciding what features your music streaming app should have.
The Cost & Timeline
This is the best part about creating your own music streaming app using an audio streaming script. Since everything you need is already built, it will take a maximum of around a week to get things in place provided you have already made the other arrangements!
As for the expenses, it’ll cost you only an approximate $700 (which is 100 times less than the other method). You’ll be charged further for any additional out-of-the-box features/customizations.
How Do Music Streaming Apps Like SoundCloud Make Money?
In a phrase, SoundCloud works on freemium features!
A freemium model is where you get to use the base product for free but to access the premium features, you have to subscribe to a membership plan.
For instance, Spotify does not allow users to stream audio in the best quality in its free plan.
Below mentioned are some of the ways how SoundCloud makes money,
Advertising: Just like any other music streaming service, SoundCloud makes money via advertisements. Free users get ads in between songs very often. The ad partners include but are not limited to Netflix, Starbucks, and Amazon.
SoundCloud Go and Go+: The mentioned are SoundCloud’s most popular subscription plans. When users subscribe to these plans they get an ad-free music listening experience. Also, they can listen to songs offline. These plans cost $4.99 and $9.99 respectively!
SoundCloud Pro Unlimited: This is what makes SoundCloud different! This plan is for artists who look forward to uploading music tracks to the platform. They can share tracks to other platforms like Spotify and Apple Music as well! The plan costs $12 when billed annually and $16 when billed every month.
Apart from the above-mentioned, SoundCloud also sells tickets to music events on the platform and makes money via them! You can use similar monetization models on your music streaming app. Since StreamTunes already has the feature to enable ads and subscription models, you should have no trouble getting started!
I guess we’ve covered everything you need to know about how to create a music streaming app like SoundCloud & how audio streaming websites make money! And it’s time to wrap up the read!
Final Few Words
SoundCloud was launched in the year 2007 and is now available in 190+ countries. The platform generated $200 million+ revenue in 2020 and seems to go only in the upward direction.
All this brings us to only one conclusion! There’s no better time to create your own music streaming service. Since the subscription-based music streaming service trend has only picked traction in recent years, you should find no trouble scaling your business!
In this read, you have come across the music streaming market overview, the steps to create your own music streaming app from scratch and using an audio streaming script, and the cost & time taken to do so. Also, you have got the ideal audio streaming script to create a SoundCloud clone!
Now that you’ve got everything you need, why do you still wait?
Launch your music streaming app now! And when you’re done, let us know! We’d love to take a look at it!