It is rightly said that “Music is a magic that produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot live without”. In the age of digitisation music streaming websites and applications have become the most crucial part of people’s life. Everyone is just one click away to access the music to the best of their choice.
This article is designed to provide you a detailed analysis about the Cost to Develop a Music Streaming Mobile Application.
Music streaming has inclined up tremendously since its inception and is now among the best ways to listen to music. To begin with let’s have a glance at the Statistics (Source: Statista ) which is an evidence that the Streaming revenues now account for over 56 percent of total global recorded music revenue worldwide. In 2019, streaming revenues reached 11.4 billion U.S. dollars which is the highest ever recorded.
SOURCE: STATISTA
TOP RATED MUSIC STREAMING APPS
- Joint best music streaming service: Spotify
- Joint best music streaming service: Deezer
- Best for multiple devices: Apple Music
- Best hi-res streaming service: Tidal
- Best for Amazon Prime subscribers:Amazon Music Unlimited
- Best for watching music videos: YouTube Music
- Best for classical music: Primephonic
Categorization of Music Streaming Apps:
Music streaming applications are categorized into two types:
- On-demand music streaming: On-demand services are featured by user-created playlists that can be shared with others.
Examples: Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal
- Radio station: Radio streaming services are mostly linked with music discovery, with an app which acts as a DJ and picks a variety of songs to play in a particular order.
Cost Modules of a Music Streaming App
Below mentioned are the Key Cost components of Music Applications:
- BackEnd Process: The Backend process contributes to about 10 percent of the total cost components of the Music Streaming App. The credit to shape any music streaming app in the best possible manner goes to the backend technologies that support the music platform.
The music streaming apps are built using Python or JavaScript along with PHP on the server-side and Java is mainly used for the backend.
Below is a gist of other tools that can also serve the purpose:
- Kafka software: Managing and processing the real time data
- Bootstrap: Web App Development
- Amazon S3: Storage related services
- GraphWalker: Testing as per the model and integration with Python services
- CEF or chromium embedded framework: Crucial element to develop the UI for Desktop Applications
- Utilization of proxy servers & HTT
2. Android, IOS App & Desktop App: The Android iOS App and the Desktop app contribute to about 20 percent and 40 percent of the cost component of music streaming apps respectively.
These Apps have a wider market penetration and reach with a larger audience for each category, especially in emerging markets of developing areas.
3. Design: The best approach that could be suggested for designing a simple mobile application is PhoneGap Development.
Speaking of Building applications for a variety of platforms like iPhone, Android, Windows requires different frameworks and languages. PhoneGap development is a form of Cross-platform app development that uses standards-based web technologies to bridge web applications and mobile devices.
Phone gap development allows you to build your app in one language, creating a single source of code, that can be compiled into native code across multiple platforms as required.
PhoneGap apps are future proofed to work with browsers as they evolve since they are standard compliant.
Key features of PhoneGap App Development include:
- It creates apps for all major mobile operating systems like Apple iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows etc.
- It allows users to upload the data contents on a website and it automatically converts it to various App files.
- Robust Backend System: PhoneGap App development system has a strong backend process that speeds up the overall development and minimizes the efforts.
- Open Source: PhoneGap is an open source platform which means it can reach a wider group of audience and is significantly free.
- Flexibility: PhoneGap App development offers the best flexibility to the developers as they can develop any type of mobile. Developers familiar with basic knowledge of HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript can get started with Phone Gap development. There is no need for developers to learn any additional languages. Anyone with minimum development knowledge can get their hands on this platform.
The emerging trend of App development had led to the evolution of many PhoneGap App development companies. Some Examples of PhoneGap App development company include: OpenXcell, Utility, Cubix, Swenson He, RipenApps.
4. Testing: The below mentioned points comprises of different testing approaches:
- Functional Testing: Functional testing of music apps generally includes a user interface. It includes verifying the application performing the proposed functions, as directed by the business strategies or described in the specifications as per the requirement analysis.
- Usability Testing: Usability testing is done to ensure that the music app is adaptable, usable, and ease of use.
- Performance testing: Performance of the music application is crucial to validate the performance of the app in different real-time situations like no or low network, memory or battery along with server not reachable.
- Installation Testing: This type of testing will help to validate if the user can install, uninstall, and update the music streaming app accurately without any sort of interruptions.
- API Testing: An Application Programming Interface (API) works to connect the app to the network and to other APIs.Thus, API testing on your music app ensures that the integration and APIs permit operation is in the highly efficient way.
- Load Testing: Load testing needs to guarantee that the music app performs reliably across networks.
The Prices of the Music streaming app may vary depending on the features, however the more you invest wisely, the more you can make big bucks.
The development of a mobile version of any application is a serpentine process and can take a longer span of time. Music App Development Companies usuallycharge based on per hour basis according to the complexities involved and timeline.
Talking about US Market standards about $30-$40 can be considered as a fair deal for this kind of app. Costing also includes paying for Requirement analysis, key features designing, UX/UI designing, Quality Assurance and the Testing Team.
Assuming that a music app developer would charge the user at a rate of $25, then the cost of developing a standard Music streaming app would be as follows:
| COST | PURPOSE |
| $15,000 | A Minimally viable product application with basic features
|
| $30,000 or more | A Music streaming app for IOS |
| $45,000 or more | A Music streaming app for android |
| $55,000 or more | A Music streaming app for multiple platforms with the complete range of features |
Geographical factors can also play a role in determining the cost of developing an on-demand music streaming mobile app.
Let’s consider the figures from the following countries
- Europe (Western & Eastern) – from $30-$170 and $20-$150
- US: $50 – $250/hour
- India $10 to $80/hour
WRAP UP
With continuous innovation and trending technology the cost of development of an On Demand Music Streaming Mobile App will be cheaper in the coming years. So, to turn into a profitable outcome, one needs to be in for a penny, in for a pound and invest and focus more on the unique features which are absent in the previous apps and then implementing the App at the mint condition to gain the advantage.
Also, while designing the music streaming app the technology tree that we choose as our base will ultimately impact the overall cost of the app. Technically one can choose Web App, Native App Hybrid App, Cross Platform App or Next-Gen Components-Oriented JavaScript Frameworks. However, the PhoneGap app development has expeditious compilation speed and can be deployed to all major operating systems. Phone Gap even supports seven operating systems- iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, WebOS, Symbian, and Samsung Bada.
Thus, PhoneGap app development has led to easy cross-platform application development by just removing the development environment fragmentation.
