Spotify has spent $10 billion on music royalties since its creation and it's a big part of why its bleeding money Becky Peterson 2018-02-28T21:49:44Z. Also most times, developer rate is a defining factor to app cost. To make a music streaming app or any mobile app takes hundreds or thousands of hours. So, $25 per hour or $150 per hour rate for same app would make a fortune in between. For music app like Spotify, the biggest chunk of work would be backend (20%) and app development (40%). Spotify is a streaming service and app that allows users to stream music from wherever they are. And with multiple different plan options, users can get music free or for a monthly cost with.
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From a startup in 2008 to 100 million monthly active subscribers in 2017, Spotify has claimed the throne of music streaming business. Having a smartphone is synonymous to listening to music, practically. With customers in such abundance within reach, how much does it cost to make an app like Spotify is a hot topic.
Music streaming business is on the rise, as people do not have to download anything anymore. Vinyls and record collectors is a different story of itself. Our subject here in is how much does it cost to make an app like Spotify. Music just about equals Spotify and/or iTunes for millennials. What does it mean for mobile app development industry? Finding out the cost to create a music app.
How does Spotify work
Spotify is a music streaming and playlist social sharing service available in 60 countries. It has over 30 million songs in its library and works across almost all devices. Users do not have to download songs and store them on a hard drive to listen. In Spotify users just find a song or album and play it online right away.
You have to be a registered user first to have access to basic Spotify features for free. But you’ll see in-app advertisement and won’t be able to listen to music offline. Paid Spotify subscriptions grant you full features, like downloading, no ads, or hi-fi sound quality in Premium. More Q&As below.
How much does Spotify cost?
There are 2 versions: free and Spotify premium for $10/month.
How to download music from Spotify?
Available only in Premium account, go to Library, select song or album. Then slide the Available Offline button to the right.
How to listen Spotify offline?
Select a playlist, tap Edit, and check if the arrow-icon next to it is grey or green. Tap grey ones to turn it green, which means a playlist is synced to your device. Press Done afterwards.
Make Money On Spotify
How to make playlists in Spotify?
Library > Playlists > Create new playlist. Name it, add tracks, or edit it at any moment.
How do you share a playlist on Spotify?
Select a song or playlist, tap the 3-dotted icon, and tap Share. Choose between Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr options and tap Post.
Next in our agenda of how much does it cost to make an app like Spotify are app features. Both basic and extra. So what makes up a music streaming business?
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Spotify features
Currently, Spotify is not covering all the existing markets. In many countries users get the “Not available” notification. Hence, opportunities for music apps or to create music streaming website are still open. And the cost to make an app like Spotify would, of course confide in features and type of app. Here are core features of Spotify app:
What sets Spotify apart from other music services and radios is audio streaming. This technology allowed to enjoy music as easily as never before. More on that in our next section. Now, to make a music streaming app like Spotify one would have to implement the following features:
- User profiles and authorization: forms for users to register and login, using email address or social media accounts
- Audio streaming service: to enable constant online access to music files through cloud storages
- Search and organize options: search and navigate algorithms to find songs by titles or artists, and save favorite tracks
- Playlists: that users can save, edit and listen and share both in online and offline
- Offline availability: saving music to users’ devices or computers, or caching files
- Social sharing: options to share songs/playlists with friends and see what others are sharing, privately or publicly
- Notifications: to get news from friends, artists and community.
In addition, you would almost definitely need to create subscription plans for a music app. The main way to earn money on Spotify-like app is to grant access to cool features with paid subscription. Or if you make a free music app, you can monetize on ads.
Let’s move on to specific ingredients to start your own music streaming service.
Technology stack for music streaming app
How much does it cost to make an app like Shazam
And technology behind the app explained. Separate costs for iOS & Android....
April 19Simply put, Spotify stores all the music on servers and sends requested songs to users’ devices. All files are cached on smartphones or laptops so there’s no need to retrieve it again from servers. For this, and all other features, Spotify use Cassandra, PostgreSQL and general memory caching system.
To make a music streaming app you can build your tech stack around Python and JavaScript, like Spotify team does. PHP is used to some extent on server side, though Spotify backend structure is mainly built with Java. Also, consider these tools that impact the cost to make an app like Spotify too:
- Kafka software: to manage and process data in real-time
- GraphWalker to conduct model-based testing and integrate with Python services
- Amazon S3 (or similar) to store audio files, caching with CDNs
- Dataproc or other Google cloud platforms for platform infrastructure
- Chromium embedded framework (CEF) to build UI for desktop application
- Bootstrap and/or HTML5 for web app development
- Nginx as open source HTTP and proxy server
Cost components of Spotify-like app
There’s no plain and precise way to answer how much does it cost to make an app like Spotify. As you may know, mobile app development is a lengthy and complex venture. Consider dev team hired, hourly rate (or fixed price), business strategy, type of mobile app, features and app infrastructure, timeline, etc.
In most cases, developer rate is a defining factor to app cost. To make a music streaming app, or any mobile app, takes hundreds or thousands of hours. So, $25 per hour or $150 per hour rate for same app would make a fortune in between. As we’ve settled earlier with Shazam, Starbucks or Instagram cost articles, let’s use median $50 hourly rate for estimation.
For music app like Spotify the biggest chunk of work would be backend (20%) and app development (40%).
Though do not dismiss design/UX, web/front-end and quality assurance. These tasks are critical as well to make an app similar to Spotify. And together, it all suggests hiring a team of 7-10 experts, at least.
Backend for app like Spotify
The architecture (backend) to an app like Spotify could quickly turn quite entangled. This is due to use of many supplementary services, like Spotify apparently does include hundreds of them. Most of them are written in Java and Python, others with Clojure and HTML5 languages. Less of PHP, used primarily for server-side logic.
Spotify team utilizes C++ for Mac/Windows client, Java for Android and Objective-C for iOS applications, nothing new here. The main principle behind Spotify backend is partitioning by features. Each app feature has a team of developers assigned. To make an app like Spotify you would also need to link the JS and backend with so called ‘access point’.
We’ve also prepared a chart of broad architecture for audio streaming app like Spotify:
Backend development estimation: 200+ hours.
Related topic: How to make an app in 10 steps.
Android/iOS platforms
Now comes the most time-consuming and costly part of actual mobile app development. Developers you’ve hired would start programming a music app for Android, or a music app for iPhone. Our issue of how much does it cost to make an app like Spotify is resolved here.
Spotify Android SDK and Spotify iOS SDK are now available publicly. It aims to ease developers work a bit for features like music streaming and authentication. Though services like Android Multimedia Framework can help integrate audio/media files, you still can’t make it quick.
Here is our time estimate breakdown by features to make an app like Spotify:
| Feature | Android (hours) | iOS (hours) |
| App skeleton | 50 | 50 |
| Main screen | 60 | 55 |
| Login | 24 | 20 |
| Registration | 32 | 30 |
| Music player | 150 | 150 |
| Search | 80 | 80 |
| Browse | 60 | 60 |
| Video player | 150 | 150 |
| Library | 80 | 75 |
| Artist | 24 | 20 |
| Album | 24 | 20 |
| Playlist | 24 | 20 |
| Advertisement | 40 | 45 |
| Downloading | 24 | 25 |
| Social integration | 40 | 40 |
| Settings | 80 | 75 |
| Push notifications | 40 | 30 |
Spotify App Costs Money Quote
These are only essential features not to bore you with too many details.
Native platform development estimation: 1400 hours.
Conclusion: the cost
And now we are ready to reveal how much does it cost to make an app like Spotify. Note, we are outlining only a generalized estimation of costs, based on features and tech stack for a music streaming app. Also remember, we’ve used $50 hourly rate to evaluate the cost of Spotify-like app. Though, we have skilled app engineers to hire at $30 hourly rate at ThinkMobiles .
| iOS application | Android application | App for multiple platforms | |
| Backend | $10.000 | $10.000 | |
| Development | $60.000 | $70.000 | $130.000 |
| Design | $8.000 | $10.000 | $20.000 |
| Desktop app | $5.000 | $5.000 | |
| QA / PM | $7.000 | $10.000 | $20.000 |
| Total cost (approx.) | $90.000 | $105.000 | $185.000 |
WIth all those variables in mind, a music app like Spotify would cost you:
- $70.000 for MVP with basic functionality only
- $90.000+ for iOS music streaming app
- $105.000+ for Android app similar to Spotify
- $185.000 for multi-platform full feature application.
In conclusion, the fact that $14 billion was floating around as Spotify acquisition deal says volumes. About the value as well as music streaming business prospects. Spotify alternatives are already on the march – Pandora, Deezer, iTunes, Soundcloud, Grooveshark, Google Play. Wouldn’t you want to join?
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Difficulty Level : Intermediate
License Requirement : Community Plan or Power Apps / Power Automate per app or per user plan
If you are not interested in the inception of this, skip the very interesting story and just jump to Let’s Create.
This whole idea started when I was on a road-trip from Cincinnati to Orlando with my #FlowFam ( Jon Levesque, Anton Robbinsand Ed Gonzalez). We had more than 12 hours to spend and to make the most out of it we could only do one thing – Make a flow!
The flow had to be something around the road trip and we wanted to involve the community so that they felt like they were a part of it. So, we thought what if we could create a flow which when triggered manually, takes the geo location and the song that we are currently playing on Spotify and posts it on Twitter. And 1 hour later –
To take it to the next level, we created a flow to accept song requests from twitter , which we received as approvals (as some people were rick rolling us) and then as we hit on approve, it played the song right then. To see all this in action, watch this video from Jon who vlogged the whole story –
When I built the flow (in the backseat of the pickup) I couldn’t make the best optimized version of it. I actually wanted to use a custom connector, however, for some reason that wasn’t working correctly and that’s why we had to use HTTP actions in flow and I had to generate a refresh token every hour and change it in the flow.
Let’s create
Does Spotify App Cost Money
In this blog post, we will create a custom connector to connect to the Spotify API and use it to search for tracks, play a sound track and get the current playing track.
- Step 1 – Register an app on Spotify
- Step 2 – Create a custom connector
- Step 3 – Use in Power Automate and Power App
If you are thinking about not doing this because custom connectors are premium, WAIT! You can create a community plan for your personal use for free!
Step 1 – Register an app on Spotify
If you don’t have Spotify premium, you can still use the custom connector , however, you won’t be able to play specific tracks. So, I would highly recommend getting the free trial.
Follow the steps below to create an app on the Spotify developer portal –
Once you have created the app, you can copy the client id and client secret and paste it in notepad or whatever you think is a secure place (probably a sticky note pasted on your monitor)
Step 2 – Create a custom connector
If you don’t know anything about custom connectors or APIs , don’t worry! I didn’t know anything about it a year ago (and yes I still call myself That API Guy)
First, go to either make.powerapps.com or flow.microsoft.com and log in with your credentials. Click on custom connectors in the left navigation menu.
Next, click on New custom connector -> Create from blank. Then enter a name for the connector and click on continue.
Now, you will see a wizard kind of experience with 4 steps, each of which I have described below with the screenshots.
In the security tab, use these values-
- For Authorization URL : https://accounts.spotify.com/authorize
- For Token and Refresh URL : https://accounts.spotify.com/api/token
- Redirect URL – This will be generated after you click on create connector.
- For Scope : user-read-currently-playing user-modify-playback-state playlist-modify-private playlist-read-collaborative playlist-read-private user-read-playback-state
Scope defines what permissions you want to give to you to your Spotify app. For this blog post, the scope above will be sufficient for all the actions that we want to perform. You can add / modify this later based on your requirement.
If you select Spotify under the identity provider, it messes up the scope and doesn’t prompt you to allow for all permissions that you entered in the scope. So, don’t select it please.
Click on create connector. You will now see that the redirect URL has been created. Copy it and paste it on your Spotify app’s settings and save it.
For the Definition step, let’s create an action to get the current song playing on Spotify. We will try some other API endpoints at a later stage.
Next, click on “Import from Sample” under the Request section to define the endpoint we
Click on “Update Connector” and then go to the last tab ‘Test”.
You will have to create a new connection to test your custom connector.
A window will pop-up asking you to log in to Spotify (if you aren’t already logged in to it in that same browser window). Once you log in, you will be asked to allow the Spotify app all the permissions that we entered in the scope. Click on agree the same way you would do for all the random apps in the world, at-least this an app that you created. You can TRUST this one! 🙂
Once you click agree, the connection will be created and weirdly you will be redirected to the Connections page. You would think that it would stay on the same page and allow you to test, however, not everything comes that easy I guess. Anyways, now that you are on the connections page, just search for Spotify and check if connection was created.
Now, go back to Custom connectors page and click on edit, and go to the ‘Test’ section. You will now see the connection that you just created in the Connections drop-down list. All that is left to do is to click on ‘Test Operation”! Before you do that, play a song on your Spotify.
Here’s a demo –
👍 Wow! that must feel good to get that working. That’s just the start though.
Here are some more actions (API endpoints) to have fun with this connector. You can create a lot more from using this API reference doc.
Spotify Free Music App
Step 3 – Use in Power Automate and Power App
Now that you have the custom connector created, let’s use it in a flow and app.
- In a flow – We will create a flow to search for a christmas song and play the first one from the list of results.
This is the expression I used to get the track id from the JSON response from the Search for tracks action –
Let’s see it in action now –
2. In a Power App – Let’s make this one a challenge. Create a Power App with this custom connector and tweet a demo of it on Twitter with the hashtag #PowerPlaySpotify and I will do something special for you!
Here’s some inspiration –
There is a lot more that you can do with this connector, especially for the holiday season. So go create this and tweet about it with the #PowerPlaySpotify . I would love to see your creativity with it.
Install Spotify App
Note: If you do end up using other actions / endpoints, make sure to check if the scope required for that endpoint is included in the Scope under security.
How Do Artist Make Money On Spotify
Enjoy and Happy holidays!