Windows 10 1809 October 2018 Update/ Spotify App from Microsoft Store. Issue: There is no 'Create New Station +' button in the Radio category in the desktop app. Furthermore, creating a playlist based on a song from the right click context menu creates a Spotify-curated playlist based on the artist - meaning the station stops once the playlist. Spotify is opening up its Canvas feature to more artists, the company announced this morning, which means you’ll see a lot more of those looping videos on the app starting soon. The feature has. Jun 05, 2019 Spotify is testing a lot of things right now. In the last month alone, the company has revealed its long-rumored in-car device, curated podcast playlists and a standalone Stations app. When Autoplay is switched on and you reach the end of an album/playlist When you right-click on a playlist and select Go to Playlist Radio. To follow a Radio station, just click on the three-dot menu in the Radio station in desktop and click Follow. Hope that clears things up!
Everyone likes music. The tempo of life is getting faster and faster. Often there's no time to go through an entire list of music tracks and purchase the ones you like. Fortunately, audio streaming applications have changed the way we listen to music.
With modern technologies, we get effortless user experience and receive music in a matter of clicks. Mobile devices and a stellar speed Internet connection only compliment this trend.
If you want to learn more about music streaming apps or create a music app, this article is right for you. Below, we share the music streaming market statistics, song streaming app monetization strategies, and how to make a music app like Spotify.
Read on!
5 Steps to create an app like Spotify
Step 1. Consider the main Spotify-like app features
A music streaming app includes such features as registration and signing up, music organizing, music discovery, social sharing, push notifications, and music library.
Step 2. Choose licensing type
As for Spotify, the platform has two types of licenses including Sound Recording License Agreement and Musical Composition License Agreement.
Step 3. Find music app developers
Choose a team that will build an app like Spotify for you. There are a lot of factors for you to consider. You also should check the portfolio of your music application development company.
Step 4. Develop an audio streaming app UI/UX design
Now, you and your development team should agree on how the future app will look. For that, you need to create an app Wireframe, Mockup, and Prototype.
Step 5. Create audio streaming app MVP
At this stage, you will decide on your MVP (minimum viable product), and all the other details with your development team and you are ready to go.
Why consider music streaming
If we're talking about music services - there are typical online radio stations and music streaming services, like Spotify. That's how people enjoy quality, easy-accessible sound spots.
What's more, people globally shift to their mobile devices to do pretty much anything. Phone calls only use a fraction of the time people spend on their cell phones.
But there is more!
- The global music streaming market is growing steadily — the global subscriber base is expected to reach 2.81 billion by the end of 2025.
[Image source: Goodwater]
- Music Streaming Application Market is expected to reach $17.50 Billion by 2025
- Statista said 14% of the population use paid music streaming services several times a day.
[Image source: RIAA]
- There are 186.7 million digital music users in the U.S.
- Spotify has over 200 million active users, more than 109 million paid subscribers, and about 40% of the global music streaming market
Did I mention that 72% of Spotify users are millennials, who, it seems, were born with mobiles in their hands?
Driven by advantageous technologies, the music streaming industry continues to grow. Therefore, the development of your live audio streaming app might be a great idea.
Current Leaders of the Sound Streaming Market
There are three leaders in the sound streaming market, including
- Spotify with 36% market share
- Apple Music with 19%
- Amazon Music counting 12% market share
Now, let us take a closer look at each of them.
[Image source: MIDA]
Spotify
Being a pioneer in the music-streaming market, Spotify is the best-known music app. The app has 109 million premium subscribers and 232 million monthly active users.
App users receive access to different music services. They include Discover Weekly playlists and experimental ones, like the Australia-only station.
Spotify has Facebook integration, which allows users to share with their Facebook friends. Besides, this feature enables Spotify users to share their music easier than competitors.
[Example of Spotify interface]
Apple Music
Apple Music is the second most popular music streaming app. It provides users with plenty of features and a discount for families and students. In June 2019, Apple Music had over 60 million paid subscribers, and 50 million songs in the library. All Apple devices, including Apple HomePod, are compatible with this app. Still, unlike Spotify, the app does not have robust sharing options.
[Example of Apple Music interface]
Amazon Music Unlimited
Amazon Music is an advanced version of Amazon Prime Music, provided to Prime subscribers for free. For an extra payment, users receive access to an expanded catalog. Amazon Music recommends playlists grouped around artists the user already listened to. Also, the app shows the song lyrics on the 'now playing' screen.
[Example of Amazon Music interface]
To conclude, Spotify is not alone in this online music thing. Other significant players are Apple Music and Amazon Music.
All music streaming services have a lot of benefits, including:
- Quick access to music
- Affordability
- Unlimited storage
- Social engagement
As you can see, all these services appear to be outstanding because of these common features- they are effortless, intuitive, and easy to use.
The Killer Idea Behind Spotify
To give you a clear idea of how to start a music streaming service, let's discover the inner logic behind Spotify.
- Spotify stores music on various servers
- To stream a random track on your mobile, Spotify finds it on one of the millions of servers and sends it to your device
- Servers, in this case, are computers and all other gadgets of Spotify's subscribers
This concept is more effective than hitting servers with requests to download the track. At the same time, you become an essential link for the global social music sharing network, which is engaging too. And, it enables users to listen to all this music legally by paying royalties to authors.
Now, let's learn how to build a music streaming app and make it profitable.
How to Make Money with a Spotify-Like App
Music streaming services, like Spotify, have two main ways of earning; premium account and running ads. Let's check how Spotify applies these strategies.
[Image source: Statista]
Premium Services
The premium Spotify account provides users with free access to unlimited music across other devices. Besides, the app allows temporary downloading of songs for offline access and plays the highest quality music. There are several types of paid plans, including:
- Student plan cost $4.99 per month
- Regular account - $9.99 per month
- Family account - $14.99 a month
Ad-supported Services
App users with a free account can listen to a limited among of songs on demand, which may be interrupted by an advertisement. By using this business model, Spotify charges advertisers a cost-per-click and cost per mile fee.
According to their site, Spotify spends a significant chunk of money to pay royalty rewards to artists.
[Image source: Statista]
Read also: How Do Apps Make Money?
This concludes how to earn with your Spotify clone. You have to become a part of 'back to paid music' preachers, deal with authors and provide your users with a good deal of music value for their membership.
Critical Features to Include in a Spotify-Like App
If you are looking for ideas on how to make an app like Spotify, consider the following app features:
Registration / signing up
First, a user should be authorized to use your system. Users can register in Spotify via email or social media like Facebook.
Make sure you take this step very effortless for users. Connect it to social media and you get new subscribers in a matter of taps.
Music organizing
The app should provide features of grouping one's music, etc.
So, users can create playlists for different purposes, like current activities and genres.
Music Discovery
To motivate users to engage with your app more often, you need to provide them with personalized content. And here is where Spotify has a great competitive advantage over other services.
Spotify uses an AI-based recommendation algorithm that selects songs for the Discover Weekly section. Spotify developers created their own powerful discovery engine.
Let us check how it works.
For Weekly Discovery recommendation, Spotify uses three types of recommendation models, including:
- User crossovers with the listening history of other users
- Natural language processing. In Spotify, this technology works on the Echo Nest API. It learns about the music genres by analyzing the text and looking at similar terms associated with the artist across the Internet. Kafka manages the data in real-time.
- Deep learning to analyzes the raw tracks. For this, Spotify applies' convolution neural network.' This deep neural network learns from experience using only raw data input.
All things social
This feature allows users to share songs with friends and highlight favorite tracks on a social feed. It's also going to serve your app with a good deal of word-of-mouth advertising at the same time.
Read also: How To Develop a Social Media App?
Push notifications
Push notification is a deciding feature for such a social community based on follow-ups and spreading content. People want news from their favorite sources; that's how it works now - users wish to have valuable personalized benefits from your service.
Music Library
Unfortunately, this feature is absent in Spotify. Because of this, users can not host or upload their tracks and create a music library. The only option is to create personal playlists and subscribe to music channels created by other users.
At the same time, this feature is available in Apple Music. It allows users to add and synchronize songs on their devices and in-app playlists. Users can store a certain amount of songs on their app for free or upgrade to a premium plan.
To give you a clue of how to make a music app, and even better app than Spotify, consider this function as well.
Now, let's find out, how to build a music app.
Where to Start: Your Guide to Making a Music App like Spotify
Now, let's dig deeper into the process of music streaming app development. Below, we share a step-by-step guide on how to make a music streaming app, together with cost estimations.
Check this out.
Ideas are everything
For music app development, you need to specify the whole concept of the app. In order to do this, find a similar application, and of course, think of something that makes your app special.
Licensing
When developing a music streaming service, you need to get a license to provide your subscribers with legal audio content.
As for Spotify, the platform has two types of licenses for music distribution, such as:
- Sound Recording License Agreement, covering recording rights. Spotify uses licenses received from the big three record labels - Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment Group, and Warner Music Group.
- Musical Composition License Agreement. This covers the rightful owners of the songs, managed through two main firms in the U.S.-BMI and ASCAP.
When looking for an answer on how to make your own music app, do not forget to get such a license.
Find music app developers
Now it's time to come to the actual work and choose a team that will build an app like Spotify for you. There are a lot of factors for you to consider. To estimate how much it costs to develop a music app like Spotify, check developer rates among regions:
- USA/Canada-based dev teams - $50 to $250/hour
- Western Europe - $30 to$170/hour
- Eastern Europe - $25 to $150/hour
- Australia - $50 to $150/hour
- India - $10 to $80/hour
You also should check the portfolio of your music application development company. From the beginning, communicate with your team to make sure you're on the same track. At the APP Solutions, we usually hold meetings with our clients on a regular basis via Skype.
See also: How to Outsource App Development?
Plan & Estimate
This market has significant potential, but that's not enough to run and spend all you have for a killer application. You need to run a study and learn about your target audiences' preferences. Then, communicate your business idea to your development team. The team will come up with some technological solutions, cost estimation, and project requirements.
Develop an audio streaming app
UI/UX design
Now, you and your development team should agree on how the future app will look. Here, you can offer the design team some ideas, if you have them.
The necessary process of the music app design creating includes the following stages.
- Wireframe. The team will create a black and white app that shows the general concept of the app.
- Mockup. The team develops colorful but static screens of the future app. Mockups include icon design, button shapes, spaces, etc.
- Prototype. The team creates an interactive model of the app that shows how the app acts. As a rule, prototypes give you an option to tap, swap, drag, and see the result.
Choose tech stack
To develop your Spotify-like app, consider Spotify developer tools, like Python and JavaScript. Besides, Spotify uses PHP for the server-side and Java for back-end structure. As we said, Spotify stores all the music files on the device cache. For this, use Cassandra, PostgreSQL, as well as a general memory caching system.
When looking for a clue on how to create a music streaming service, take into account that Spotify uses the following technologies:
- Kafka software for real-time data management and processing
- GraphWalker for model-based tests and Python integration
- Amazon S3 for cloud-based music streaming
- Dataproc for platform infrastructure
- Chromium embedded framework for building UI for desktop application
- Bootstrap for web app development
- Nginx as open-source HTTP and proxy server
- C++ for Windows/Mac clients
- Java for Android music streaming app
- Objective-C for iOS music streaming app
How to make a music streaming website?
You can empower your app with Spotify players by integrating Spotify player SDK. This library contains classes to stream management and audio playback. It takes on all the negotiation with Spotify's back-end, digital rights management, and decoding.
[Spotnews screens]
We did such integration for our recent project, SpotNews. SpotNews is an audio streaming platform that provides personalized music content. The idea behind the app is to allow users to listen to their favorite songs while reading the news sections.
We also used:
- Spotify SDK for authorization via the Spotify user profile
- Java Android SDK, Retrofit, Fresco, Crashlytics, and Realm to provide smooth app performance
- PHP, Silex, MySQL, Composer HTML5, CSS3, Twitter BootStrap, Jquery, Bower, Less, Nginx to moderate the news feeds via the Admin Panel
You might also like: HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO DEVELOP A CHAT APP LIKE SNAPCHAT IN 2019
Create audio streaming app MVP
At this stage, you will decide on your MVP (minimum viable product), and all the other details with your development team and you are ready to go.
When looking for ideas on how to create a music app, consider the following features for your music streaming app MVP:
Feature | Integrations | Estimation in hours |
Registration / signing up |
| From 32 hours |
Profile user |
| From 36 hours |
Social Share | From 15 hours | |
Personalization | Pick-up algorithm that will choose the next music track for each individual user. Use ML to find appropriate songs for users | From 100 hours |
Music player |
| 70 |
Track search |
| From 32 hours |
Playlist manager |
| From 60 hours |
Total | From 345 hours |
The average development cost of a music streaming app like Spotify is about $40-50K per platform.
For a more detailed estimation, you can use our project cost calculator. Now you know how to create a music app like Spotify.
You might also like: HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO MAKE AN APP?
Take it to the test
After the application is ready, the team does in-depth testing to ensure the app runs smoothly. We usually implement it right after the app is prepared and approved. Plus, three months after release our developers can fix any issues occurred for free.
Wrapping up
The music streaming app market is growing, and its revenue is expected to reach $17.50 Billion by 2025.
Spotify is the leader among music streaming apps. It uses a raft of modern technologies to provide users with relevant music content.
While music streaming is a hot trend, you have a chance to get your share of the music streaming market, as Spotify did.
But, to achieve success with your app, and be ahead of competitors, you need to get started asap.
The last thing that remains is to find a development team. And we are here to help.
Digital music might not have the same allure as sitting down to listen to a record on your turntable, but what it lacks in atmosphere, it makes up for in convenience — especially when you aren't home with your collection.
It's been five years since Spotify publicly launched and shifted the music industry's focus toward streaming as a way to combat illegal downloading. While the streaming business model is far from perfect, even the most casual music fan should test out streaming while it's still growing.
See also: How Spotify Engineered the New Music Economy
If you're just dipping your toe into the stream, follow our beginner's guide and soon you'll be listening to Spotify's massive library without the worry of losing precious hard drive space.
Signing Up
Spotify Stations App For Pc
As with most services, you can register for Spotify by connecting your Facebook account for optimal social features, or create an account with your email address.
Pick the subscription that suits your music habits. The prices are in USD, but the tiers are the same internationally: No cost will get you desktop listening interrupted by ads; $4.99 per month allows for unlimited desktop streaming; users who pay the premium $9.99 per month can listen on all desktop (via desktop app or web player) and mobile devices with offline syncing privileges on mobile (Spotify Radio is the only free mobile feature.)
Users at the premium tier can also listen to music at a higher bit rate, which is essential for anyone who has quality headphones or earbuds.
Image: Spotify
Before you start listening, check your preferences and privacy settings to make sure you are sharing as much or as little with the world as you'd like. If you connected your Spotify to Facebook but don't want to broadcast your tunes on your News Feed, uncheck the Facebook sharing option. Leave the Spotify sharing section checked to show up in your followers' feeds — this amplifies Spotify's social music discovery potential.
This page is important because you can choose whether or not to make your playlists viewable to the public as soon as you start, or make it public on your own terms. Also, you can opt-out of Spotify showing your top artists and tracks on your public profile, if you aren't one to brag about such things. Plus, you can connect your Spotify account to Last.fm so your scrobbles stay representative.
Organizing Your Music
Library and Local Files
In the left sidebar, you will find your Collection. Here, you can access local files (go to Preferences to manage the folders from which Spotify can import files) and music saved to playlists. The Library section puts all of this music in one place. By accessing the files found on your hard drive, Spotify acts as a one-stop shop for listening to all your music, meaning you don't have to open iTunes or another player.
How.to.make A Station.on Spotify App Subscription
Playlists
Playlists are Spotify's main draw. You can create your own by clicking the New Playlist button, or following and subscribing to other users' playlists. Bookmark an album by saving it as a playlist, too.
Image: Spotify
You can also set up a collaborative playlist among friends to prep for that that perfect road trip or party. Right click on a playlist to check off the collaborative option and share the playlist with your friends. This alt-menu also shows the option to change the privacy settings to 'Make Public' or 'Make Secret,' depending on your preferences.
See also: 11 Tips and Tricks for Spotify Power Users
Image: Spotify
If you want to stay up-to-date with a specific user's playlist, click the green 'Follow' button on the bottom of the top title bar, and it will save to your side bar. You'll get a notification when songs are added to the playlist.
Play Queue
Spotify Stations List
This option is ideal for when you aren't listening to an album, since queuing up a song via the right-click menu will place it after the track you are currently listening to, and will interrupt a record.
When listening to a playlist or playing music in the background, the queue is great for accommodating requests and spur of the moment sing-a-longs with friends.
Sharing and Discovering Tunes
In the last year, Spotify has significantly amped up its social and music discovery features to keep up with its competitor Rdio, which prioritizes social discovery.
See also: 7 Music Discovery Tools to Find New Tunes
Following
How.to.make A Station.on Spotify App Free
Image: Spotify
Spotify lets you follow friends, artists and organizations (follow Mashable's account here!) to see what your network is listening to. You will get a notification when artists you follow add music to their catalogues.
The social feed lives in the right sidebar, and at the top Spotify will make recommendations to follow, including Facebook friends or artists your friends enjoy. This feed will show what your friends are listening to right now, songs they've added to playlists, new playlists they've created, tracks they've starred, and playlists, songs and albums they've shared on Spotify.
If you didn't register your Spotify account through Facebook, you can still search for friends and organizations via the search bar.
Sending and Sharing Music
Image: Spotify
You can highlight your favorite music in Spotify's social feed by sharing via the button on artist, album or playlist pages, or the right-click menu. Write a message and check your connected social networks if you want to share to Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, too.
The Send tab on the right of the box allows you to send music to individual users in a private message.
Discover
The Discover section is filled with custom recommendations based on your music history. If you are stuck picking out something new to listen to, you can get lost scrolling down this page.
Image: Spotify
In addition to suggestions of new artists deemed algorithmically similar to ones you already love, Spotify will remind you of albums and songs you haven't listened to in a while. Sometimes the recommendations don't feel right, but the algorithm can only improve the more you use it. Unfortunately, there is no option to reject or modify suggestions at this time.
If you are unsure you might like one of Spotify's suggestions, hover over the album art until a play button appears. Then click it and hold down to preview the song.
This will interrupt whatever you are currently listening to, but once you let go of the play button, your song will resume. It is not the smoothest listening feature, but it can come in handy, especially when browsing to make a playlist.
Apps
Spotify's unique apps can also help you find music when you aren't feeling inspired, or you'd like a change of scenery. Some apps will tell you the lyrics of the song you're listening to, others will provide you with a review, and a few will show you what is trending on the charts, web and social media.
We recommended the following apps: Pitchfork, This Is My Jam, Domino, Twitter #Music (formerly We Are Hunted), Any Decent Music?, Blue Note, TuneWiki and Billboard.
Radio
Spotify Radio functions like a typical Internet radio service. You can create stations by artist, song, album and genre, and upvote or downvote songs you love or hate. Spotify Radio is free to use on the mobile app, even if you aren't a Spotify Premium user.
Mobile
Image: Spotify
Spotify's mobile app is a pared-down version of the web player (tablet apps more closely resemble the web player), from which you can select playlists to download for offline listening, to save your data usage. This is only available for Premium users.
What Is Spotify Stations
Another feature exclusive to the mobile app is Browse. This saves you the trouble of coming up with a playlist yourself, which is helpful when you're out and about while using Spotify on your smartphone.
How.to.make A Station.on Spotify App Download
Now that you've completed your crash course on Spotify, get streaming!
How.to.make A Station.on Spotify Apple
Mashable composite image: iStockphoto, akindo