How Much Does Soundcloud-like App Development Cost-A Complete Study

The transition from traditional rotary dial phones to smartphones, the relaxation in data charges, and the consumers’ desire to spend hours listening to music have radically transformed the music streaming industry.

Various new audio and music streaming applications entered the market, reached a wider audience, and reaped higher benefits both in terms of popularity and revenue. A clear idea of which can be taken from the statistics shared below.

This thriving growth of the music streaming industry has made many startups and entrepreneurs plan to build an audio streaming app. And ultimately, compete among the industry’s top leaders to enjoy the limelight and other advantages.

Top Music Streaming Apps Ruling the Market

Undoubtedly, all of these music streaming applications have gained huge momentum in the market. The twos that have redefined the industry are Spotify and SoundCloud.

While we have already covered an extensive article on Spotify and its Development Cost, let’s focus on the latter in this article.

Beginning with the basics of SoundCloud mobile app.

SoundCloud -The App that Changed the Landscape of Music Streaming Domain

Based in Berlin, SoundCloud is a music streaming and audio distribution platform that lets users listen to millions of songs and upload and promote their own tracks. It was started in 2007 by Eric Wahlforss and Alexander Ljung and is available on desktop and mobile platforms.

It functions very simple and hassle-free, which you can learn in the video below.

SoundCloud has earned the reputation of being one of the largest music streaming platforms with  76 million registered users and 175 million monthly users, 250 million tracks, and 10M music creators worldwide. Something that not only proved it to be users’ favorite but also hinted that it is a profitable business idea to enter the market.

A ripple effect is that many entrepreneurs and app developers have started taking an interest in determining the cost to develop an app like SoundCloud and other technicalities, which we will cover in detail here.

But before that, let’s uncover what music market issues have SoundCloud application has solved.

Issues that SoundCloud Solves in the Music Streaming Industry

1. One-Stop Shop for All Audio Files

Unlike various other music streaming applications, SoundCloud didn’t confine its services to playing music online. It offered the option to access podcasts related to business and technology on the same platform. This indirectly led to getting the sector a lot of exposure and, in turn, more queries around podcast development costs

2. Share Your Own Tracks

Various music streaming platforms in the market let users listen to the latest music. But, only a few let artists upload their work and get the fame they deserve.

SoundCloud focused on this issue and came up as a platform that eases the journey of music curators to enter the market and make their presence, along with letting them enjoy others’ work as a user. Something that adds to the benefits of using music apps like SoundCloud.

3. Community Building

SoundCloud, being a music social media platform, also introduced the social media feature of making a community of like-minded people. Also, it offered the option of posting and reposting content, adding comments, and more – that helped both users and artists get fame and enjoy social interactivity.

Features to Consider in SoundCloud Clone App Development

The Soundcloud app, with unique and engaging features, has increased its popularity in a short span of time. Here is a curated list of features you cannot skip if you want to build a music app like Soundcloud.

1. Search

As the name depicts, this feature enables users to search for any music track, artist, album, or category.

2. Create a Playlist

This feature lets users pick the best songs and curate their own playlist.

3. Record Your Track

This is one of the essential features of the SoundCloud app. It allows artists to record their tracks and upload them in a private/public community. And this way, they earn fame and money in the marketplace.

4. Real-Time Streaming

This feature enables users to come across the songs and albums that are trending in a particular category, region, or year.

5. Play Music

The Play Music feature gives users an option to play any music file.

6. Social Media Integration

Another feature to consider while developing an app like SoundCloud is social media integration.

Considered as one of the core features of viral and addictive apps, the social media integration feature lets users sign up via their social accounts rather than creating a new account. Also, it offers them an opportunity to share their favorite tracks on social media platforms.

7. Commenting

Commenting is yet another feature that makes SoundCloud stand out of the crowd.

With this feature, a user can add a comment to the song they have been listening to at any point in time.

8. Find and Follow Friends

This feature allows users to find other users, follow them, and eventually make their own music community.

9. Repost on SoundCloud

This also counts under the top features of SoundCloud app that make it different from others. It lets app users repost their content to their followers, just like we do in the case of Social media applications like Facebook.

While these features please users in the music streaming industry, what makes them pick SoundCloud over 8tracks, Amazon Music, and other music streaming SoundCloud apps is their UX strategy.

SoundCloud UX Strategy: An Analysis of Elements Shaping its Growth

1. Faster Login

Knowing that lengthy and cumbersome forms to create an account can be a barrier to user retention, the team offers social media login feature. Also, they ask for minimal information when you create a new account.

2. Clean Interface

The SoundCloud team has embraced a card-based layout for their user interface (UI) design, alongside minimal aesthetics. This makes it easier to showcase app elements smartly.

For example, on the Music Player screen, the track length is shown in larger font, and album art is blurred to enhance readability, making it possible to tap on the waveform, which is quite larger than the standard seekbar.

They have also used soft, countered fonts and warm colors to make users feel welcomed. Besides, they have ditched the norm of placing the search tap on the top of the screen and added to the menu bar at the bottom of the app – making the best use of spacing.

3. Higher Gesture Controls

SoundCloud application has also replaced skips and back buttons with horizontal swipes and introduced the power of gestures to deliver an enhanced user experience.

These features make SoundCloud rule the minds of people from all walks of life across the globe. However, these features do not work single-handedly. Different libraries, programming languages, and frameworks fuel their functioning. So, let’s uncover the SoundCloud app tech stack before evaluating the app development cost.

Tech Stack for Building a SoundCloud-like Mobile App

For SoundCloud like app development, Reactjs is used for Frontend UI development, and Bootstrap is picked by the Frontend framework. Whereas, Laravel 5.2 is considered for Backend development and MySQL for database management.

Likewise, the DigitalOcean server handles all the hosting requirements, Stripe manages payments, SMTP offers email services in real-time, and Nginx Server streams audio files.

Apart from these, other technologies, APIs, and frameworks that are required to build an app like SoundCloud include  REDIS Server and Queue Concept, Google API, BitBucket, GreenDao, JPlayer, Firebase Cloud Messaging, Facebook API, and AFNetworking.

While the knowledge of mobile apps technology stack and features would have given you the basic information about the development process, there’s more to it. When talking about how to build SoundCloud apps, there are various challenges that development companies come across.

So, with an intent to make you more familiar with the core technical things and help you to put forth a realistic demand to your hired entertainment app development company, let’s check for the common music streaming app development challenges they face.

Challenges Faced During Music Streaming App Development

1. Licensing

The biggest challenge Android app developers have to solve while creating an app like SoundCloud is licensing.

Since the application must pay royalties to the music creators and other right holders for every streaming song, licensing is imperative. Something which comes under two different labels:-

• Copyright on the song’s composition is owned by the song lyricist or the publishing agency.
• Copyright to the owned by the record label.

2. Recommendations

Delivering a personalized experience to users in the form of recommendations of similar songs is yet another challenge that incorporates the development process.

If your development team does not rely upon impeccable tech stacks like the one we shared earlier in the article, it would be difficult to ensure highly personalized and accurate recommendations.

3. Speed and Convenience

SoundCloud application has replaced most of the clicks functionalities with gesture controls. This is yet another challenge that mobile app development companies must deal with when building an app for multiple devices and OS versions.

4. Social Media Elements

Since SoundCloud is a music social media app, i.e., the collaboration of music streaming and social media platforms, maintaining this identity is also a challenge for developers.

This is so because both types of mobile applications come with their set of features, functionalities, technology stack, and ideology. So, picking the right elements and maintaining harmony between both the faces of the application is also a difficult task for any iOS or Android application development company.

Now that we have looked into the challenges faced during the development of a music app like SoundCloud, let’s get into the benefits of developing such applications.

What are the Benefits of Creating an App like Soundcloud?

1. Boost Online Visibility

Music creators need to have an online presence to engage more audiences to be successful. They should know how to create brand music streaming application and use tools that will help them get noticed and found easily in the internet world. 

2. Premium Charge

Today, popular artists and music record companies charge more money for online content. Hence, when creating your own OTT streaming app/platform, you can easily raise or reduce subscription fees for the lost revenue, leading to increased profits.

3. Deliver Originality At Its Best 

Streaming providers have begun to invest in original content due to top music streaming services like Spotify and YouTube. The new music independent artists can freely conceptualize, produce, distribute & monetize content without thinking. 

4. Activate Live Streaming

Live streaming can be useful mostly by artists when developing music streaming websites and creating a personal rapport to have an authentic version of their music.

How Much Does Soundcloud-like App Development Costs?

The answer to how much does an app like SoundCloud costs is not finite.

This is because the app development cost varies with several factors, including app screens and size, features and functionalities, app platform targeted, frameworks and other tech stacks chosen and their compatibility, and more.

So, the best way to get a clear and exact SoundCloud-like music app cost breakdown is to contact the top On-demand music streaming app developers and get a cost estimate.

However, if you want a platform-specific app with basic features and functionalities, the average development cost of a SoundCloud-like app for Android would be around $10,000 – $30,000. For the iOS app development, the cost will differ a bit.

If you want a cross-platform app that runs flawlessly across all devices and platforms, the development will go up lies between $60k to $80k.

Now, while this is all about how much you have to pay to develop an application, let’s look at how much you can earn. That is, the ways to regain the money you invested in the process of building on-demand music streaming apps like SoundCloud.

Business and Revenue Model of SoundCloud Music Streaming App

As per SoundCloud’s business and revenue model, it offers 55% of the net revenue generated by a song uploaded to its creator and holders. Whereas, when it comes to how it make money, it follows four different monetization strategies:

1. Freemium Model

In this app monetization model, users can use the application for free. But, only limited features and options will be available to them. They will have to pay a certain amount to access more features and opportunities.

2. In-App Advertising Model

In-App Advertising is one of the best monetization strategies often considered by music streaming applications.

Under this category, users need not pay anything to access the application’s content. But, some advertisements are integrated into the application, which on being viewed or clicked by users, pays to these music streaming applications.

3. Subscription Model

In the subscription monetization model, users are asked to pay a certain fee to access the premium features and functionalities of Soundcloud like app for a regular period of time.

When talking further about the subscription model, the app offers two premium services under the label – SoundCloud Pro and SoundCloud Go.

• SoundCloud Pro

This functionality provides musicians and artists with an opportunity to upload unlimited tracks of nearly six hours of audio and perform other actions like disabling comments, getting deeper analytics, and more. And this is all at the subscription.

• SoundCloud Go

This subscription service provides users access to more than 150M tracks from famous and new emerging artists and an ad-free experience for $9.99* per month.

4. In-App Purchase Model

This app monetization strategy lets users sell or buy virtual/physical goods within your application.

With this covered, let’s wrap up this article by looking into tips and tricks to make your SoundCloud-like mobile app ready for the future. And eventually earn more ROI.

Tips to Make your SoundCloud Clone App Successful

1. Offline Mode Accessibility

The music streaming apps often rely on Internet availability.  Because of this, users find it tough to enjoy their favorite tracks while boarding an aircraft or traveling in an area where the signal is too poor.

If you offer offline accessibility, the app usability ratio will considerably rise in this situation. Users will spend more time on your app and eventually bring more outcomes than what you expected from an investment in SoundCloud, like music app development.

2. Event Calendar Feature

This feature will let users track upcoming concerts and fan club meetups. And this way, enjoy the best of music in both the real and virtual world.

3. Better Artists-focused Options

One of the prime challenges faced by SoundCloud application is that as soon as artists become popular, they exit the platform. So, considering this challenge as a new pool of opportunities, bring better app features and functionalities that give artists a reason to remain on the platform for longer.

Also, introduce better payment solutions that make it irresistible for artists to turn to any other music streaming platform to earn more.

4. Pre-Save Feature

Already available on Spotify and Tidal, this feature lets users know about the newest album coming in the market. It adds the album to users’ libraries where it becomes available just the moment it hits the market.

Something that gives users an escape from the hassle of searching and listening to the song when it is live.

5. Lyrics Availability

Last but not least, introducing the functionality of accessing the lyrics of every audio track that’s playing on your app platform can also increase its success ratio.

Ending Note

Developing the best audio streaming app like SoundCloud requires in-depth market research, a lot of paperwork, a clear roadmap, and a skilled team of developers. Selecting the right tech stack and resources is equally important when managing the development cost of building music streaming app like SoundCloud.

Still confused about how to make a music app for android or iOS?

With our dedicated team of mobile app developers, you will get a feature-loaded app using the latest technology. Get in touch with us to discuss your white label audio streaming app requirement and get a free quote to know the music streaming app development cost for your app project.

FAQs

Q. How much does the SoundCloud app cost?

A. Anyone can sign up and use SoundCloud app. If you want to access advanced SoundCloud music app features, it will require a monthly subscription of $4.99*(web/Android)/$5.99* (iOS) per month, and SoundCloud Go+ is $9.99* (web/Android)/$12.99* (iOS) per month.

Q. How much time will it take to build an app like SoundCloud?

A. The average time to develop an app like SoundCloud is between three to nine months, depending on the app’s complexity.

Q. How much does custom music app development cost?

A. If you want to develop the best audio streaming app like Soundcloud with the basic features, it will cost you around $60,000 to $80,000. And with advanced features in your music app, it will cost you between $85,000 to $160,000.

THE AUTHOR

Sudeep Srivastava

Co-Founder and Director