How to Build SaaS App Like Spotify

 
 

👁 Overview of Spotify as a SaaS App

Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming services with over 500 million customers in 180 countries and 205 million subscribers. The service operates as a Software-as-a-Service application. Let's take a look at the main SaaS features that underlie Spotify.

1. Spotify is a non-downloadable software that needs to be installed on a local device.

 
 

👩‍💻 Why Should you Make Music Streaming Apps Like Spotify?

Probably, starting to read this article, you ask yourself the question: Why do I have to create my own music streaming app? There are so many of them on the music streaming app market and there’s a big risk of just losing all the money.”

Of course, there are always risks. But with a competent approach to the music app development process, those risks can be avoided.

One of the biggest benefits of building a popular music streaming app like Spotify is the ability to monetize it. You’ve already familiarized yourself a little with the number of Spotify subscribers in the previous section, but let's now look at the financial benefits of such an application. In total, Spotify offers 5 types of subscriptions:

• Spotify free or Freemium model (listening to music with limited functionality and ads)
• Spotify Premium (ad-free listening, offline playback)
• Spotify Duo (subscription for two people)
• Spotify Family (maximum 6 family members)
• Spotify Student (for university students)

Subscription prices range from $5 to $15. In addition, the Spotify app makes money from advertising (for free users), partnerships, merchandise and data.

 
 

📱 Features to Include in the Music Streaming App

In this section, we will talk about the essential features that a successful music streaming app should have. And also, we will tell you how to improve some of them. Thank you for continuing to read!

Registration / Signing up 👋

This is the first screen that any user of the application encounters. It’s very important to make it intuitive. And as an additional convenience, a good solution would be to add the ability to register via email or social networks.

👓 Licensing

Music streaming services allow users to listen to music without buying. But, the service itself needs several types of licenses for the legal use of music content. This is a necessary step in creating an app like Spotify.

Since, in this article, we paid special attention to Spotify, let's look at what types of music distribution agreements it has:

• Sound Recording License Agreement. Spotify app uses licenses from the three largest music labels in the world (_Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment Group{target=blank rel="nofollow noopener"}, and Warner Music Group){target=_blank rel="nofollow noopener"}.
• Musical Composition License Agreement This is a license agreement with the music content owner.

Depending on the region, several large companies handle public use rights. In the US, these are the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI).

And in Europe, to obtain public use rights, you must apply to the Society of Authors and Composers of Europe (SESAC).

Using music content without proper licenses can permanently damage your service's reputation and lead to lawsuits and fines ($30,000 to $150,000). Therefore, it’s worth remembering in advance about licensing your service.

 
 

🤖 Tech Stack for Music Streaming App Development

In this section, we’ve collected all the technical tools for you so that the development process of the application is easy and doesn’t take much time. You can consult with your development team and choose the most suitable development path for your project.

1. React Native is a framework that will help you create an app on iOS and Android at the same time.
2. Kafka software will help you manage and process data in real-time.
3. GraphWalker will reduce development time through model testing.
4. Amazon S3 is a cloud-based solution for music streaming application.
5. Bootstrap is a popular web application development framework.
6. For your admin panel you can use React Admin, Django Admin, Vue.js Admin, Flask Admin or KeystoneJS. There are many solutions depending on your needs and programming language.
7. RabbitMQ can be used to control the flow of music tracks, messages between the application and the server, and other tasks.
8. Wowza Media Server is a server for transferring media content in real-time.

 
 

👂 Takeaways

As you can see, creating a music streaming app like Spotify is a very complex and painstaking process. In order for your application to be able to compete with the big players in the sound streaming market, you need to work out all the important development stages well.

Let's summarize the above text:

• In order to compete in the music streaming industry, it is important to work out the app idea well.
• In addition to the basic features, consider additional app features that will be in your service. For example, an exclusive podcast output. This will attract the audience in the early stages.
• Pay special attention to the issue of licenses that your future app must have.
• Choose a convenient technology stack that will allow you to save time and money in music app development.

We hope you have a better understanding of how the world of music streaming apps works. Even though it’s a very difficult job, it can be a very profitable business.