How Much Does It Cost to Build a Music Streaming App?

Gone are the days when people relied on traditional music systems to enjoy their favorite music. In today’s online age, they rely on music streaming applications to listen to their favorite songs.

Some of the popular music apps like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and many others, have changed the way users enjoy music. These apps allow users to save their favorite track, download it, create and manage their playlists, etc.

It has fostered the demand for these music applications by growing their user base and thus revenue generation opportunities. Spotify alone has 220 million subscribers and 551 million users. The app has generated $13.91 billion revenue in the year 2023.

So, the above stats may have impressed you, right? You may be desiring music streaming app development. If yes, you may be interested to know about the music streaming app development cost.

Well, we have covered everything here in this blog. For launching your own music app you can hire a music app development company.

What is a Music Streaming App?

A music streaming app serves as an online platform that gives users the liberty to access and listen to their favorite songs. They can access a vast library of albums, songs, playlists, and more through the internet.

A music streaming app is quite different from traditional music downloads. It brings possibilities of on-demand playback without the necessity of file storage.

With a music streaming app, users find possibilities to access different genres, discover many new artists, and enjoy personalized recommendations. A large number of apps of late offer features like curated playlists, offline listening, social sharing features, and more.

As far as subscription plans are concerned, it may offer an ad-free experience and top-quality audio.

Cost to Build a Music Streaming App

Let’s have a detailed look at the cost to build a music streaming app. It will give you an idea about the cost related to your developing your own music application.

Factors Affecting the Cost to Build a Music Streaming App

You need to understand that the development of a music streaming application is something that gets impacted by several factors. Some of these important factors are as follows:

1. Type of App

The type of application you wish to develop is something that impacts the overall music app development cost. Some of the most popular types of music streaming apps include on-demand streaming apps, live streaming apps, and radio streaming apps.

Spotify is one of the most popular and the best examples of an on-demand music streaming app. It lets users select any specific tracks to play and offers offline playback and personalized playlists. These apps involve higher development costs since they are complex and feature-rich.

As far as live streaming applications are concerned, these mainly focus on real-time music or event sharing. It requires powerful servers and lower-latency streaming capabilities.

As far as radio streaming apps are concerned, they are simple and offer curated radio channels and various pre-programmed playlists. The development cost for the same is less when compared to many on-demand applications.

2. Platform

The platform selection to develop a music streaming app also adversely affected its cost. Whether you wish to opt for iOS, Android, or both, it impacts the cost to develop a music app directly. Opting for a single platform for music streaming app development can indeed be cost-efficient.

Many important tools such as React Native or Flutter allow applications to run on both iOS and Android. It minimizes both the development time and cost. Moreover, when you develop a native app, it offers a great performance and user experience. But, it can be expensive.

3. Expertise and Location of Developers

You need to understand that the geographical location and expertise of the development team can also create a substantial cost difference. Developers who have vast experience and expertise in leveraging advanced tools often charge high.

Meanwhile, their unmatched proficiency causes fast and reliable development. Location also has a huge impact on the development cost.

For instance, developers from the US or Western Europe generally charge hourly rates when compared to developers in many regions such as Eastern Europe, India, Southeast Asia, and more. Their hourly rate ranges from $50 to $150 in the US. Meanwhile, Indian developers charge from $20 to $50 on an hourly basis.

4. Development Hours

The total time needed to develop an application plays a vital role in cost determination. Development hours depend on both the feature set and the complexity of an application.

When it comes to developing a basic app with certain essential features such as search functionality, playback, user registration, etc., it may take 400 to 800 hours. Developing an intermediate app with features such as curated playlists, offline playback, and social sharing maximizes the development time from 800 to 1500 hours.

When you develop an advanced app with complex features like AI-based music recommendations, integration with third-party services, live streaming, and more. It can exceed even 2000 hours.

5. Development Team Strengths

The size and composition of your development team tends to affect cost. A general team includes UI/UX designers, project managers, backend developers, frontend developers, and QA testers.

Larger teams can speed up the development process but also increase the cost. Besides, those teams that have diverse skill sets tend to tackle even complex functionalities quite efficiently. But, it’s something that often comes at a premium.

6. Project Complexity

Project complexity is something that also extensively costs of your music app development. It generally correlates with its cost as well. Adding more advanced features such as offline playback, AI-based recommendations, or integration with several payment gateways can increase complexity as well.

Building a powerful backend for managing user accounts, real-time streaming, and playlists adds to the cost and development time. As far as third-party integration is concerned, it includes integrating APIs for payment or analytics, licensing music, and following copyright laws, which further contribute to the complexity.

Top 5 Music Streaming Apps

Let’s get a detailed overview of various music streaming applications based on their subscription details, features, and more.

Also Read: How to create an app like Soundcloud

Must-have Features to Build a Music Streaming App

Implementing the right features in your music streaming application is quite necessary as it determines the success of your application. We have discussed below some of the top features that you can implement.

1. User Profiles and Authentication

Creating a fully personalized experience is something that begins with powerful user profiles and authentication systems. Building a robust profile is something that is quite necessary for delivering a personalized experience. An authentication system also plays a vital role in this.

Your music streaming application should allow users to register themselves through phone numbers, emails, third-party platforms like Facebook and Google, etc. It also ensures a smooth onboarding process as well.

User profiles allow customization, including favoriting tracks, saving playlists, tracking listening habits, and more. It’s necessary to add several latest security measures, including two-factor authentication, which improves reliability while ensuring full data privacy.

2. Music Library

A well-organized music library is something that is the heart of any music streaming application. Your application should have the capability of offering a range of artists, genres, tracks, and albums.

A detailed categorization system improves navigation, which lets them discover new music even without putting in any effort. The most important things you can take into account are organized music by artists, mood, and popularity.

You can also include new releases and many trending playlists. Make sure the audio files are top-quality, which should be 320kbps streaming.

3. Playlist Management

When it comes to playlists, these are indeed great music streaming applications, which enables users to curate and organize popular and their favorite tracks. Offering several necessary features including mood-based suggestions, collaborative playlists, and auto-generated playlists based on user preferences can also improve the app’s appeal.

For playlist management, the most important thing you can keep in mind includes creating, editing, and sharing playlists. Your application should offer smart playlist recommendations according to listening history. You can get several collaborative playlist options for group sharing.

4. Push Notifications

Push notifications are top-rated tools for keeping users fully engaged. You can notify them about several new releases from their favorite artists, live streaming events, or updates on playlists. Make sure notifications are timely and also relevant to avoid any overwhelming users.

Your music streaming application should be able to notify users about the latest albums, features, tracks, and more. It should be capable of sending personalized notifications according to user activity. The app should be capable of letting users customize notification preferences as well.

5. Lyrics Integration

It’s another crucial feature that your music streaming application should have. It’s a kind of feature that most users appreciate as it allows them to visualize song lyrics in real-time.

Lyrics integration improves the overall listening experience, which also makes it convenient for users to sing along or also can understand the actual meaning behind the music.

Your music application should synchronize lyrics in real time with the audio. It should offer a toggle option when it comes to displaying lyrics. It should be capable of translating lyrics into different languages for global appeal.

6. Social Integration

When it comes to social integration, it’s something that promotes a greater sense of community and ensures interaction within your application. It allows users to share playlists, tracks, and also their listening habits on various social media platforms which can indeed enhance user engagement and app visibility.

Your app should allow sharing songs or playlists on many platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. It should allow users to follow friends or also favorite artists within the application. It should have the ability to display the listening activity on a public feed.

7. Music Categorization

A thorough categorization is helpful to ensure users can navigate properly the app without putting much effort. With the segmentation of music into different categories like mood, genre, region, or era, you can make discovery simple and also highly enjoyable.

The most crucial tip you can follow is to categorize by genre including jazz, rock, pop, classical, and more. Your app can add mood-based playlists based on workouts, relaxation, parties, etc. The app should offer seasonal and event-based playlists including festivals and holidays.

8. Audio Streaming Quality

A successful music streaming app should offer a top-quality and smooth audio streaming experience. It’s something that is quite necessary to draw the attention of users and engage them for more time.

You can implement adaptive streaming technology that can adjust based on the internet speed of users to ensure any kind of uninterrupted listening.

Make sure your music application offers different audio quality options, including low, medium, and high. It should include buffer-free playback with adaptive bitrate streaming. The music streaming app should have the ability to support surround sound or also spatial audio for many premium users.

9. Offline Mode

A large number of users prefer the capability of downloading their favorite music tracks or even playlists for offline listening. This kind of feature is specifically useful in those areas with limited internet connectivity for many users who seek to save on the usage of data.

Make sure your music streaming application downloads for albums, playlists, and individual tracks. It should have the ability to manage offline storage with several options for deleting expired content. You can indicate the downloaded content for easy access.

10. Live Streaming

With live streaming, users get the liberty to attend many visual concerts, exclusive album launches, and artist Q&A sessions. It can add a dynamic element to your application and also boosts a deep connection between fans and artists.

Your music streaming application should offer live concerts and interactive sessions. It should be capable of notifying users about various upcoming live events. It should be capable of offering various options for live chat and reactions even during streams.

11. Advanced Search Option

Advanced search option is another must-have feature for your music streaming application. It ensures users can find what they prefer to listen to. Be it an album, artist, track, or playlist, they can find everything easily through the advanced search option. You can implement predictive search options and filters, to improve usability further.

12. Personalized Recommendations

Personalized recommendations with technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI) are vital to enhance user engagement. You can analyze your listening habits, preferences, etc., to suggest albums, songs, and playlists, tailored to match the speed requirements of individuals.

You can implement AI-based algorithms in your music streaming applications to get suggestions with accuracy. A music streaming app should offer a completely dedicated section like ‘Recommended for You’ content. It should also include a family or weekly playlist according to user behavior.

13. Customizable User Interface

You need to understand that a visually enticing and customizable user interface plays a vital role in boosting user satisfaction. It should let users switch between different themes, rearrange elements, or also can set their preferences as well for a personalized feel.

Your music streaming application should include a dark mode for higher usability at night. It should include a customizable home page according to user preferences. The app should have a dynamic background theme based on the playing track.

Conclusion

So, after going through the above post, you may now have a clear idea regarding the cost of developing a music streaming app. Before you proceed with your music streaming app development, it’s necessary to prepare your budget. Of course, a solid strategy is quite necessary to develop your app. Once you are fully prepared, you can partner with none other than The NineHertz to develop your app.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. How Do Music Streaming Apps Work?

Music streaming applications function by offering users complete access to vast music libraries online. These applications can host songs on cloud servers and lets users stream music quickly even without downloading the same. The application implements algorithms to recommend different songs according to users’ preferences. In addition to ads and subscriptions, they also offer a pay-per-stream model and other options as well.

2. How to Create a Music Streaming Platform?

The development usually involves passing through several important stages such as conceptualizing the platform, development of the platform, licensing, monetization, and more.

3. How Much Does an AI-Powered Music Streaming App Cost?

The average cost to develop an AI-powered music streaming application ranges from $50,000 to $300,000. It depends on several aspects such as advanced algorithms for searching, personalized suggestions, connection to other services, and many more.. Apart from this, some other factors also impact the cost of music streaming app development. These include the complexity of AI algorithms, the location of the development team, platform selection, and more.

4. How to Reduce the Cost to Build a Music Streaming App?

You can minimize the cost of building a music streaming application by adopting several important strategies. These include adopting an MVP, approach, outsourcing development, cloud solutions, pre-built solutions, and more.