Technologies for Music Streaming App Development: Backend & Frontend

This year, the revenue of music streaming services will exceed $15 billion, gradually hitting the $19 billion mark by 2027. By this time, the population of users of social media music apps will reach a billion! The profitability of this market will also grow, so the investment will pay off quite quickly. Why not take advantage of this?

Weelorum has been developing applications for various platforms of all complexities and purposes. In this article, we touch upon the issue of choosing technology for developing music streaming apps on iOS and ways to solve the main tasks.

Technical Features of Streaming Music Applications  

It’s no secret that streaming platforms have boosted record sales. They influence how composers write songs and how we relate to their music. Accessibility, convenience, and personalization have led to the fact that we now listen to music much more often.

Most people go to Spotify, Apple, or YouTube music, and ditch outdated solutions (like Samsung Music) that play files from storage media. What is the fundamental difference here, exactly?

From a technical standpoint, old solutions are simpler. At best, these are slightly modified music players. If you want to listen to music, you should download it to your device manually, and only then can you enjoy your favorite song.

Streaming apps work differently. Yes, they also have a player, but they broadcast the track to your mobile device, finding it across thousands of servers worldwide. Moreover, it happens so quickly and seamlessly that you don’t even realize that the song is not stored on your smartphone. These opportunities require a completely different level of tech stack for building music streaming apps, which we’ll discuss in future sections.

What are the Main Music App Features in Demand Today?

Like any other application, a streaming solution should be functional and user-friendly. Here are some aspects users expect to see in streaming apps:

Sign Up/Registration

A standard way for users to create an authentic user cabinet and quickly access it when needed.

User or Artist Profile

A personal account where users can conveniently manage content and subscriptions, post content, track trends, and get all available information about one’s subscribers (in the case of an artist profile).

Push Notifications 

With real-time alerts, users get to quickly learn the latest news from the world of music and about the changes in the service.

Music Player 

The interface includes an audio track, volume control, buttons for playing, switching tracks, and presenting an album or clip cover.

Catalog

Makes it possible to create and quickly put things in order in the user’s audio library.

Podcast & Radio

Empower users and increase the popularity of the application.

Playlist 

A tool for custom song lists. Users can mix their favorite songs themselves, or it can be done by the app’s algorithms.

Artist & Album Profiles

Allows users to learn more about their favorite artists.

Track Search 

It is a must-have in streaming apps for users to be able to find songs or podcasts.

Audio Streaming 

Allows you to continuously transmit over the Internet and play content purchased by the service on demand.

Technology Stack for Developing Music Streaming Apps for iOS Platform: Backend and Frontend

The modern user chooses the most convenient services. For a streaming application to be of high quality, the tech stack for developing music apps for iOS must be selected appropriately. Let’s take a look at the most relevant and efficient ones today, in our opinion.

Backend technologies for music app development

Users should have quick and seamless access to any part of the application. To create good working syntax, databases, and server logic, your developers must possess thorough knowledge and experience with the following technologies:

Flutter

A full-fledged SDK that allows you to write native applications in a non-native language (Dart) and preserve a high speed of performance (higher than competitors, but slightly lower than native) and response/rendering. Flutter is considered by many to provide a perfect set of technologies for making music apps for iOS in terms of interface and application business logic.

Firebase

This mobile development platform provides many handy features, including a real-time database, authentication (with email and password, Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, and Google), storage, hosting, and a test lab. The tool is not free, but the price suits well, even for a startup.

Parse

A BaaS platform with tons of features in one package. Provides cloud storage, supports push notifications, analytics, social media integration, easy change of functionality, and scaling. Parse packs technologies for building music streaming apps that allow gently launching the product delivery and improving the application based on usage data.

React.JS

The library is used to make it easier to create an application interface. It does not force the use of classes. There is no component template code, but it can be written immediately as pure functions.

Realm

A fast, lightweight framework with easy integration. It does not depend on Core Data or even the SQLite backend, and it works noticeably faster in terms of storage and data management. Realm offers high performance and scalability, so this is a great choice for applications that work with numerous records.

MongoDB 

A NoSQL database with the JSON storage structure, index support, and horizontal scaling. The solution efficiently works with replica sets and simplifies the storage of complex and massive structures.

PostgreSQL

A database that supports user objects and their behavior, including domains and indexes. This is one of the technologies for music app creation that is valued for its exceptional flexibility.

MySQL

A database management system that boasts high performance and reinforced security. It is easy to use, scalable, functional, fast, manageable, and has multiple access control options.

SQLite 

A fast and lightweight single-file database management system in C language that does not require administration, third-party libraries, and services. Great for applications not designed to scale.

Frontend technologies for music app creation

The development of the interface and functions that work on the client side of the application requires expertise in the following tools:

Swift

This full-stack programming language supports complex syntax, grants overflow protection, and offers excellent code readability. Its main advantages are high speed, automated memory management, and advanced security. It tracks errors predictably and more accurately, reducing the risk of critical bugs.

Objective-C

This language is used to write the basic structure of applications. It allows you to spot errors deep in the execution stack quickly. It makes it easier to work with memory than Swift, and allows integration with heavily loaded libraries. The downside is that it is rather difficult to learn.

Java

The advantage of this language is its support for object-oriented programming. It is possible to write separate and reusable software components on it, building a strict hierarchy of applications. The presence of a variety of libraries and frameworks speeds up development.

Kotlin

The code syntax in this language is reminiscent of Swift lines, and the bases, classes, and functions have very similar ways of expression. It is strong and static in terms of typing, allowing you to work with dynamic types and eliminate errors and inconsistencies in advance.

JavaScript

JavaScript’s ECMA 6 syntax is supported by iOS and iPadOS, including ‘for’ and ‘let’ loops. If you don’t need overly complex logic, some of the project work can be done using JSON files.

Node.JS

Provides the ability to build applications with JavaScript and an extensive NPM repository. The advantage of the technology is that you do not need to retrain developers, and more specialists can maintain tool code.

React Native

Allows you to use a set of user interface components to compile and run applications. It does not render a WebView in its code but works on real, native views and components. Provides fast version upgrades.

Dart 

An object-oriented, class-based language with C-style syntax that can compile to both native code and JavaScript. Used on Flutter, allowing you to implement custom UIs.

Our Cases Of Mobile Music Streaming App Development   

As for our own experience, we can mention a few of our success stories. One of the latest is Yellow Brick Cinema. From humble beginnings, today, the project has grown into the largest relaxing music portal to help users calm down after a long working day.

The application, created by our developers’ team based on the mentioned technologies for music app development for iOS, allows you to select exclusive music tracks (and even sounds of nature) and set a timer or alarm. Four binaural beat settings let you find the perfect soundtrack for any activity.

Tech Stack For Music App Creation – Core Tools

Bootstrap

Bootstrap offers a multifunctional interface of tools used for quick layout work. The frontend framework can be customized by editing SaaS variables and using mixins.

Kafka

It is a platform that provides enough redundancy to store vast amounts of data. The enormous bandwidth message bus grants real-time data processing, resulting in a horizontally distributed, scalable, fault-tolerant commit log.

Google Analytics

A highly efficient data collection and reporting platform. Free tools allow you to analyze the data you need in a single interface to make it easier to make decisions and achieve your goals.

PayPal

The largest electronic payment system, without the integration of which no application can do. Provides the possibility of online payment and complete security of purchases without commissions.

Google Cloud

An IaaS-type platform that provides a full development cycle on the Google infrastructure. The Cloud guarantees 99.9% virtual machine availability.

Spotify Player SDK

One of the best developer tools for integrating music streaming with your applications. With it, you can build playlists, get metadata from the service, as well as search and play audio.

Consider Weelorum as Your Trusted Partner in Developing Mobile Apps   

Our company has been professionally creating mobile software products for years. Our partners include clients with smart and unique ideas, which we bring to life with the help of promising technologies for creating music applications.

Our iOS native app development services are appreciated because we do not promise but guarantee:

• Full development cycle;
• High-quality applications;
• Seamless launch and market introduction;
• Post-release support.

We care about our clients and partners, offering a team approach to achieve goals. We always have a project development plan and ensure the transparency of the underlying processes. Our customers immediately get a clear idea of ​​what the final product will look like and how it will work.

Ease of communication, engagement, and flexibility are top priorities for us. We practice two-way interaction, with clients always being involved in the creation of the UX and backend as much as they like.

The case of the Yellow Brick Cinema project shows what we can offer as a development team when creating music streaming apps. We created an appealing UI/UX design and then an iOS application using Ruby on Rails for the backend. With the help of advanced technologies for music app creation, we have also implemented our own music player, which allows mixing tracks with relaxing effects. Now, this is the best application for lovers of complete relaxation.

We create attractive, user-friendly software products that people won’t uninstall even if they need space on their gadgets. If you are also interested in such solutions, feel free to contact us. Let’s implement a project that will shake the market!

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