Apps Leagues

July 5, 2024

How to Make a Music App: A Step-by-step Guide

There are never enough music apps in a world where people enjoy music day and night. It has been estimated that around 7.11 billion people listen too much, on average, 961 hours per year. Additionally, people are always on the hunt for finding music apps with new and creative ways to stream music. So, considering this, it should be no surprise that many individuals want to learn or gain knowledge on how to make a music app. If you are interested in either of these reasons, this article is definitely for you!

As professionals specializing in customized mobile app development for businesses in all sectors, we are always aware of what kinds of mobile apps and elements are in demand in the current market. In this article, we will discuss all the important factors that you need to consider before you decide to create a music app. Let’s jump right into it.

Read more: Revive Your Inner Genius: Top 55 Apps for Creative Thinking [2024].

How to Create a Music App in 5 Easy Steps

1. Planning and Concept

This is a written rule: planning and project discovery are the first and most crucial parts of mobile app development before deciding to undertake a major project, regardless of its nature. Any software project has to undergo the discovery phase. In this phase, you will cover up factors such as:

• The estimated cost for app development
• Define your monetization strategy
• Explore unique features to help you stand out
• Fine-tune your initial idea
• Get a clear vision for future audio streaming
• Choose an appropriate tech stack
• Identify the gaps in the market

Based on your primary research, you should then be able to decide on the kind of music app you wish to create. There are several music apps in the market. How will your music app fill the gap in the market and be at par with competitor music applications such as Spotify and YouTube Music.

While you are in the process of doing your market analysis, you will notice that the most basic features music apps encompass are:

1. Music Library
2. Cloud Storage
3. User Accounts
4. Customizable Playlists
5. Music Discovery
6. Streaming
7. Offline Playback
8. Music Controls
9. Search and Browse
10. Music Library

More ideas: 55 Thriving Mobile App Ideas For 2024 (Your Guide to Help You Decide!).

2. Design and UI (User Interface)

Now that you know the basic features that should be included in creating a music app, you will need to learn more about the advanced features. The user interface of your music app will determine its functionality and success, so each function has to be carefully planned and detailed.

Let’s look at this in further detail.

Recommendation algorithms

Music apps are more fun and interesting when you include a feature that recommends a specific and tailored algorithm based on the user’s personal choices. This is where the music app suggests songs that the user may prefer. For instance, if a user likes several kinds of songs by the same artist, the algorithm could detect this and recommend new songs from the same artist in the future. Or they should provide songs from other artists of the same genre.

Music industry leaders such as YouTube Music, Spotify, and Apple use suggestive recommendation algorithms with AI technology to help them accurately determine what kinds of songs their users would like to hear. So, if you are interested in including AI in your own music streaming app, Appsleagues can help you find the best features for your music app.

Music discovery features

Music discovery is an interesting and fun way of keeping your users engaged on your mobile app. It will help users find new music effortlessly, which will directly impact their engagement, retention, and revenue. The basic idea behind this user interface feature is pretty straightforward: the more time music lovers spend on your music application, the more money you are bound to make. To motivate them to linger, consider making the music discovery feature easy and fast, making the overall strategy efficient.

Here are a couple of ways for you to make music discovery easy for your users, and they should be included in your music app.

Playlists

A music app should contain customizable playlists, making it easier for users to skim through their library of songs. Additionally, users can customize their music based on certain events or needs, such as a “workout playlist” or “meditation playlist.” Knowing that many people do several activities with music in the background, having a playlist in your music app is definitely a must-have feature.

Search Bar

Almost all music streaming apps include search bars, allowing users to quickly find songs, artists, and albums. The leading apps even offer additional features in their search fields. For instance, Spotify has a song identification feature integrated into its search engine. If a user wants to search for a specific song but doesn’t know its name, they can enter a line from the song into the search bar, and the app will list songs that contain that specific line.

Charts

Every major music streaming service features charts. For instance, YouTube Music offers a way to explore the top 100 songs in each country. This feature provides users with a great opportunity to find new content and stay updated on current trends. Additionally, appearing on these charts can help artists attract new listeners. Therefore, if you’re considering creating an app similar to Spotify or YouTube Music, it’s definitely worth implementing the charting functionality.

Artist profiles

Adding a little bit of information about the artist will not do any harm. Instead, including this in your music app builds interest in your app, where you represent that singer and the reason behind that song. Furthermore, this can help organize albums, new releases, playlists, top-performing songs, and other content.

Music player features

The music streaming industry’s top secret that leaders keep hidden: An audio streaming app must have a built-in music player. Surprising, right? Your music app should be straightforward yet efficient, allowing users to quickly find their way through their favorite tracks. Ideally, it should buffer content quickly so that your application can be used even with a slow internet connection.

Other Navigation Buttons

This part is obvious since all apps include navigation buttons; without them, it’ll just be one thing when you look at the screen. When creating a music app, you have to include common features such as play/pause, next song, rewind, previous song, loop song, and shuffle. These features are mandatory when you want to build a music streaming app.

Share Button

People enjoy sharing their favorite songs and music tracks with their friends and family. By doing this, they are also promoting your music application. So, including a share option will invite them to download your app and give it a try. This will ultimately benefit your music app.

Lyrics

By adding a lyrics feature to your music app, you will prevent users from leaving your app in search of the lyrics. Wherever there are new releases, and your music app happens to present those releases, users tend to search the lyrics. By including lyrics, you will increase their use time on your app, and it will be convenient for the users to access song lyrics without having to open another browser and find them manually. It will be a plus point of your music app, including a translation feature, increasing variety and user engagement.

Other Buttons

While they may seem like “other buttons,” they are also important, and you should include them when you decide to make a music app. These buttons can include a report, like/dislike, remove from queue/ add to queue, go to the artist, go to an album, add a song to a library, etc.

When creating a music app, you should design it so that these buttons are easily accessible and visible while also ensuring that it does not take up too much space. Aim to keep it simple and do not develop fancy features at the expense of performance. Not many people prefer extremely fancy buttons and features.

Offline Mode

Music lovers listen to music anywhere and everywhere, and not all people like to use their mobile data to listen to their music. Keeping an offline mode will ultimately enhance the user experience for your music application even more. Everyone cannot access Wi-Fi or a cellular network in certain places. So, including an offline mode for your users to listen to their favorite songs no matter where they are is a great idea, making them adore and use your music app even more.

For example, YouTube Music and Spotify allow users to listen to music offline. The sneaky catch here is that you have to buy the application to unlock these features. This is another great way to encourage users to buy your music app and to make them feel exclusive while you are making a profit. Considering that you are interested in creating a music app, and now that you know your competitors have included this feature, you definitely should not omit this from your music app.

Another reason offline mode is ideal is that not everyone has the memory to download songs on their mobile devices, which would take up a lot of storage and cause their phone to crash at some point. So, to avoid your users experiencing something unpleasant like this, make a music app that includes the offline feature.

User Profile and Management

Users who sign into their accounts should be able to access exclusive profile features. In the profile section, they should be able to manage their libraries, where they can customize, create, edit, and delete playlists, explore new songs, and receive recommendations based on previous song listens.

Additional features to improve your music app:

Song Identification

It would be suitable if your music app could recognize songs and locate them in the music library instead of you scrolling through the library and searching for the song. This feature allows users to explore a song by simply typing a line from it in the search bar. People with difficulty remembering the song title can type in a couple of lines they can remember, and your music app can search for that song and give it.

Push Notifications

This acts as a persistent reminder for users to use the music app to check out new songs or features or discover more. This is a great feature and tool for encouraging users to come visit your music app and spend more time. This can be used in events such as “new artists releases” or “ we think you will also like this” notifications.

Social Playlists

Introduce social playlists, also known as collaborative playlists, to make your music streaming more interactive. Spotify is known for including this feature in its music app to enable users to create joint playlists. It is fun to connect with your friends and create memorable playlists.

Ticket Selling

Another relevant feature when creating a music app is the inclusion of a ticket-selling feature. Here, your music app will sell tickets for music concerts and festivals that include music and host other famous singers in your app. Your users will always stay updated and not have to search for these events online. Through your affiliate link for concert tickets, you will gain additional revenue.

Voice Commands

Another valuable feature you can add to your music app is voice commands. This way, users can instantly enable the app. Instead of manually navigating through, they can command the application to play a certain playlist, and the app will instantly do that.

Learn more: What Are IOS App Development Services?

3. Music App Development (UX/UI)

Now that you have conducted market research and have decided what features you want to include in your music app, this is when you start the development process. It is important to know that your music app cannot and should not include every single feature, as that will make it difficult to understand and navigate. Your aim should be to develop a music app where users can effortlessly stream their favorite songs and easily create and edit playlists. Additional features that further enhance your music app can be a bonus.

While the next step is to carry out the UI/UX design and development, from this point onwards, you can either start with your music app development or provide these ideas to a professional app development agency (which is much preferable). Typically, it takes 150 hours for a proper app development agency to create a basic application.

UX/UI Stage

Wireframing

A wireframe is a blueprint of the app’s interface that particularly focuses on space allocation, prioritization of available features, intended behaviors, and content. It shows general design concepts. Wireframes are usually in black and white and do not include any graphics.

Prototyping

In this phase, the app design team creates an interactive model of the future music app so that you can explore and see how the app works and adjust it to your liking. This step is mandatory to get a basic idea of how your users will use your music app, and if you find it easy, then so will they. This could involve several prototypes until you feel you get the right one.

Mock-ups

Mock-ups are static representations of an app that show how it will look. They contain images, logos, navigation buttons, color schemes, and other elements or features that will make up the final product’s design.

Development Stage

During the development stage, your app development team or the agency you hire is ready to start building your music app with all the finalized requirements. The choice of tech stack will be dedicated to your music app’s complexity, the platforms you target, technical requirements and other factors. Developing a complex app will require more expertise than you can only get from a professional mobile app development agency. So, while considering this, you must be picky and careful when choosing the right mobile app developers for your project.

Appsleagues stay committed to their clients from the start, during and finish of the mobile application development. You can also avail yourself of maintenance services after the launch that can help you with any minor details that need change. By hiring a skilled mobile app development company like Appsleagues, you have a team of seasoned app developers and designers who know their way around the current market trends and use the best tools to develop and design your music app.

Development Cost

Development costs are the estimated end product cost without examining your product. If you are interested in determining your budget, you can ask Appsleagues for a quote to determine how much it will cost to create your music app.

It is important to note that based on the complexity of your music app, the number of extra or advanced features, tech stack, target platforms, and other parameters, your music app development cost could vary. Luckily, Appsleagues is renowned for being the most affordable app developers in the US. There are no hidden fees, our entire process is transparent, and our seasoned app developers can easily create the most complex music streaming apps for you at affordable rates.

Know more about Flutter Apps: Pros and Cons of Flutter App Development.

4. Test your application

Quality assurance (QA) should be considered when creating a music streaming app. QA testing is done alongside the development process. While the app developers build features and work on the app’s architecture, QA testers and engineers thoroughly test everything and create bug reports. Quality assurance is a complicated and complex process that aims to verify that the application performs as intended to perform and fulfills the user’s expectations.

Here are a couple of stages the quality assurance testing requires:

Performance

This part is to verify that your music app is working just fine with no errors and smooth functionality. This means that no matter how many users are on the music app and are using several or different features at a time, your music app performance should not create any issues, and the loading time for each feature or so should not get slowed down.

Regression

This step ensures that new updates or changes are made to the app and should not affect its functionality. This means that if any changes are made, they should be fine with the overall music app and its function.

Compatibility

Compatibility is one of the most crucial steps. This ensures that the app functions well with other devices, web browsers, and operating systems. When creating a music app, make sure that it is responsive and able to show up well on other screens and devices.

Integration

Testing the music app’s integration with other third-party applications can help your music app creation process. This can include voice assistants, messengers, social media platforms and other software.

Functional

Functionality is the basic app testing stage. This can include creating playlists, navigating through songs, creating playlists, etc. The catch here is to ensure that no matter how many times you open, close, or use the features on the music app, it will remain functional.

Usability

This testing stage refers to the app’s user interface and overall user experience. It ensures that the interface is easy to navigate and understand and that the application is user-friendly.

Security

It is important to make your music app look safe so that when users sign up and fill in their details or share the songs from your app with other devices, they do not feel threatened. You have to include security measures such as secure logins, security measures, data encryption, and protection against bugs and app malware.

Quality assurance is such an important step because you discover any other details that seem missing or need to be changed from your music app. The end music app could include many bugs, so if you are working independently while creating your streaming app, you will have to be extra careful. Still, you have this section covered by a certified app development company.

Interesting Read: 10 Best Apps for Couples to Build a Stronger Relationship in 2024.

5. Acquire Licenses if Needed

After the quality assurance phase, you would typically release and deploy your application. However, this is not the case with music streaming services. In order to stream music, you must obtain various licenses. Negligence to do so can result in heavy fines for your business.

There are numerous licenses associated with music streaming, and the specific licenses you need will depend on your country, type of app, and its specifics. Therefore, we recommend consulting with a lawyer to avoid potential problems.

A few common licensing requirements to build music streaming app can include:

Publishing Rights

This license grants the rights to the song, including its melody, lyrics, and arrangement. Publishing rights are typically owned by a songwriter and/or composer.

Performance Rights

The performance license allows you to perform a song publicly. It is necessary for apps that provide live streams or on-demand music streaming. Typically, performing rights organizations (PROs) like BMI, SESAC, and ASCAP administer this license.

Master Rights

This license grants the rights to a song’s actual recording, including the right to reproduce, distribute, and perform the song. Typically, artists or their record labels (such as Warner Music Group, Sony Music, etc.) own this type of license.

Everything you need to know about: The Cost of App Development in 2024: A Comprehensive Guide.

Over To You

We hope this article has clarified how to create a music app from scratch. Developing such a solution is complex, and the music streaming market is highly competitive. Simply releasing a mediocre product won’t lead to profits. To stand out and draw music lovers, you need a high-quality app with a refined recommendation system and unique features. To achieve this, it’s crucial to find a reliable and experienced development partner.

Appsleagues could be that partner. With years of experience developing solutions for the media and entertainment industry, we know the best industry practices and implement the latest technologies to create software of any complexity. As a customer-oriented company, we prioritize meeting the expectations and needs of everyone we work with.

FAQ’S

How do music apps make money?

Advertising is a critical source of income for music streaming applications such as Spotify. Paid subscriptions are the main way the app attracts new users and grows its monthly active user base. Additionally, user retention, or when users stay on the music app for longer periods, is another important factor.

How long will it take to develop a music streaming app like Spotify?

Complex applications typically require 9 or more months for development. For instance, sophisticated software like Spotify might take even longer. Additionally, it’s important to consider software maintenance and support, which should be provided for as long as the product is actually there.

What technology stack is compulsory for building a streaming app?

The choice of programming language depends heavily on the type of software you are building and its features. For instance, if you are looking to create an app with AI-based recommendation algorithms, Python would be a good option. Spotify, for example, was developed using Python, Java, and various frameworks. You can scroll up the page to explore all the technological solutions used in the development of Spotify.

How much money do music apps make?

When users sign up for a subscription to music streaming apps like Apple Music or Spotify, it has been estimated that they make around $11 billion in revenue. The global market for music streaming is expected to reach $29 billion in 2024. It is predicted to grow at 4.70% annually from 2024 to 2027, bringing the market size to $33.97 billion by 2027. This data suggests that there will be an increase in demand for music streaming apps.