How to Make a Music App Like Gaana & Saavn?

A Brief Overview of the Music Streaming Market

The millennial-driven proliferation of high-speed internet, IoT and cloud technologies have paved the way for a global market for music streaming apps. With updated technology providing people rapid access to products and services, the demand for music streaming services has witnessed a beyond-imaginable growth in the last decade.

“(Music Streaming)Revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate of 4.1%, resulting in a market volume of 13.05 Billion USD by 2023.”

The music and audio streaming market has seen a constant growth pattern and is expected to show similar results in the future. This is leading to more and more artists and enterprises opting for their songs and podcasts to be broadcasted on music streaming apps.

It is also why there are so many music apps like Saavn and Gaana that have cropped up recently in the market. But there are several questions that come to mind. Like “how do you create a music app like Gaana or Saavn?” or “how do these apps make money?” Read ahead and you’ll surely find out the answers soon enough.

Features in a Successful Music Streaming App

When building a music app like Saavn, Spotify or Wynk, there are certain features you need to take care of to make it stand out in the crowd. While some of them are basic and obvious while others bring the app to another level in terms of user experience.

Playing Songs from Folders

One of the most attractive qualities of such music streaming apps is that they can import songs that have been downloaded externally on to the device and play them. While music apps are known to restrict the music inside the UI of their app, they readily accept any audio file that has been saved in any folder on the phone. This is an excellent feature for people who are new to the streaming scene and want to test the waters without compromising their own playlist.

Music Store

Every streaming app that has an on-demand audio service has its own music store where people can download music from. These stores have a huge database of carefully curated songs and audio files that are available anytime.

Music Equalizer

Providing a built-in equalizer lets people customize the sound output according to their liking. There are certain presets available like Classic, Pop, Rock, etc. but if someone wants to change the sound in their own way, a virtual multiband equalizer is also available in-app.

Music Arrangement

Providing adequate organizational tools is an essential part of a decent music streaming service. Every music app provides the ability to create playlists, queue songs, and sort favourite songs for an easy and user-friendly experience.

Social Services Alliance

Most media streaming players also provide the option to sync up with social media channels. This allows people to interact with friends, see what they’re listening to, share songs with others and join like-minded communities.

User Interface

The user interface and user experience are by far the most important features that take an app to the next level. A good streaming app should be intuitive and have a seamless and informative flow when a user peruses through it.

Customized Music Player

Added customizations like font, colour, dark and light mode are a few features that greatly help in making a music player user-friendly. When people apply their own personalized visual customizations to an app, they connect with it on a certain level, which builds brand loyalty.

Push Notification

Push notifications provide latest update information i.e. song releases, new readymade playlists, etc., social updates from followers and friends and a mini player that latches on to the notification bar for as long as the player is active. These features greatly increase engagement and scalability and enhance the consumer’s user experience.

How Music Streaming Apps Make Money

It is evident that digital music streaming apps are a rife and inventive business opportunity. But before you start looking for a music streaming app builder or developer, you need to know the gist of their business plan, including their revenue model, because the bottom line of any business is to monetize their products or services. Here you’ll find out how apps like Gaana and Saavn make money.

Earlier, music was sold on a transactional basis i.e. people used to pay a small amount to download a song or an album, which lead to piracy of music resulting in heavy losses in the music industry. Music streaming companies employ a different approach. Almost every music app has a free and a paid or “premium” version.

Free Version

In this, all the songs are available for the user to stream indefinitely but with the addition of jingle ads that pop up on the player at regular intervals. Companies get to advertise to a large group of audience and the music app generates revenue through those ads.

Paid Version

Ads ruin the audio experience of any listener. Consumers are given an option to upgrade their player on a subscription basis which removes any adware on the app. Moreover, paid users are allowed to temporarily download songs for playing offline. In this case, the consumer gets a seamless music experience and the app generates revenue through subscriptions.

Technologies Involved In Creating A Splendid Music Streaming Platform

In order to understand how to make a website like gaana.com or a similar music app for Android or iOS, you need to know how an audio streaming platform is built which can deliver rich and powerful audio content. The process of developing a music streaming app from scratch incorporates a lot of variables like data storage, testing, UI/UX design and development, proxy servers, etc.

These technical variables are what empower each and every feature in a music app. Every successful music streaming platform started with the most basic technological support systems while targeting a specific market niche and then expanded its user base therefrom by adding attractive features that enhance user engagement and scalability.

The essential tech-based aspects behind a music streaming platform include:

• Database Storage
• UI/UX Design and Development
• Web App Development
• Model Testing
• Servers

Database Storage

In order to make a music app like Gaana, you’ll need a gargantuan amount of storage space to build your database. Amazon S3’s cloud storage facility enables you to store and transcode an infinite amount of data traffic in a secure and scalable way. It is designed for absolute data durability so your data is protected against threats and errors and you can access it from any system when required.

UI/UX Design And Development

The next step in building your own music app is crafting an interesting and intuitive user interface that friendly to use and enhances the user experience. Most enterprises use CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) to create the application’s UI. CEF is a software framework that embeds Chromium into other application to enable web browsing functionality and provide the application with the ability to use HTML, Javascript and CSS. It's an open source framework and is compatible across all platforms like Linux, Windows and macOS.

Web App Development

HTML5 is an open source stack that is popular in developing web apps like Gaana and Saavn. An HTML5 based music streaming player has high scalability, customization potential and interoperability and is quite efficient in carrying high-quality media. It’s APIs can easily be integrated within websites on almost all devices and platforms like Android and iOS.

Model Testing

Web applications and native mobile apps always go through a rigorous testing procedure where different test cases are checked for ideal functionality. Tools like GraphWalker provide a model-based testing pattern which can design your tests in the form of graphs. GraphWalker greatly improves efficiency by implementing a design-centric testing protocol for offline, online and event-driven test sequences.

Servers

Proxy servers are required to transmit audio, video or basically any multimedia files over the internet, making them an essential part of any music streaming app. NGINX provides high-performance open-source web servers with end-to-end encryption and a multi-layer security protocol. These proxy servers act as an effective content filter by monitoring web traffic and filtering out malicious and suspicious content.

These are the essentials required to start a music streaming platform from scratch. But there are other methods and audio streaming solutions such as Vplayed, Contus Vplay and Wowza as well which give you a conglomerated package of all the above services.

How Much Does It Cost To Build A Music App

The cost of developing a music app like Gaana depends on a lot of factors and variables.

1. Storage
2. Web Hosting
3. Backend Development and Technology
4. Designing

Storage

Keeping a well-equipped and organized storage facility helps in the smooth running of any service, whether online or offline. The cost of storage doesn’t only depend on size but also features like the security protocols, the management systems and transfer speeds. More features will call for a higher price.

Web Hosting

Another important part of the skeleton of the streaming app, web hosting service providers also provide a wide array of features and compatibility options which drive their price point.

Backend Development and Technology

The backend of any web or native app is very crucial and needs to be handled by professionals. Between implementing the latest technological trends and having an experienced developer, the price point of this expense factor cannot and should not be compromised.

Designing

An effective UI/UX design is imperative in making the frontend user-friendly and intuitive. The design is the interface between the end-user and the service, making it as important as the technology behind it.

Summary

Understanding how to create an online music streaming app like Gaana or Saavn includes knowing the building blocks and understanding how they work. Now that you have covered every aspect of starting a music streaming service, it is time to execute either from scratch or by contacting a media streaming solutions provider.