With Cloud-Computing rising briskly, the obligation of owning a huge storage capacity has diminished drastically over the past few years. Gone are the days when users used to devote more than 50% of their phone storage to downloaded music tracks. Today, one does not need to download a track to listen to it. Just open your favorite music-streaming app and some high-quality music can be listened without downloading it or bothering the phone’s storage capacity.
Music streaming as a business is booming as a prodigious niche. While companies like Spotify and Pandora are dedicated music streaming services. The popular names like Apple and Amazon are leveraging audio streaming services to support their mainstream services and products. Apple would love to keep streaming through iTunes as long as people are buying its phones, iPads, and Macs. Amazon offers Amazon Prime Music App as an add-on to its Amazon Prime customers. These companies know the efficacy of music as a business and intend to turn all the stones for getting the maximum ROI of their overall business activities.
If you intend to apply any such business strategy to offer music streaming services to your users, stay tuned because this article will guide you on how to launch your own music streaming website or app and make the best out of it.
Revenue Generation model and Business Opportunities
In the end, it is all about making money. Before investing in something as crucial as online music streaming, is it imperative to comprehend the ways exercising which audio streaming businesses make money. The audio streaming businesses need to maintain a huge database of millions of tracks to entice all types of music lovers. Moreover, different users browse the tracks variedly. While some users would be satisfied streaming average quality tracks for free, Many would love the tracks in their best quality even if they need paying for it.
There are users who intend downloading their favorite tracks instead of streaming them each time; business might charge an extra premium to let users do that. The twist is, the audio streaming software can encrypt the downloaded tracks so that they can be browsed using the same music streaming app only. By doing so, the apps bind their user-base and prevent them from moving to the third-party music-players or rival streaming apps once downloaded the tracks.
There are three main sources of revenue for an online music streaming business-
· Ads Revenue:
Ad revenue is the best model for starting a music streaming business. You can grow a user base by letting them stream their favorite tracks without any charge, while you can make money by including Ads in the tracks. You can embed one or all of the Ads such as Banner Ads on app or website interface, and Audio or Video Ads. The advice would be adding Pre-roll or Post-roll Ads instead of mid-track ads.
· Membership/Subscription:
You can offer some value-added or advanced features after charging a premium from the users. You can ask them to subscribe to the membership plans. The examples of value-added services as follows-
- Ad-free browsing
- HD quality music streaming
- Access to HD quality track downloading
- Access to curated playlists
- Access to international tracks
You can use the Ad and Membership model in collaboration to entice all types of users or offer the services to premium users only, as they do with the Amazon Prime Music app. If you intend to run a dedicated music streaming business, the best advice would be using the collaborated model. Amazon can still earn from its eCommerce or video streaming business, it is safe for them to launch music streaming for premium members only.
· Promotion-
The particular revenue model is a little complicated for startups. However, once people know about your business and start using the services, you can offer on-site/in-app promotional services to make some extra revenue. You can promote the new music tracks of upcoming movies or upcoming albums in return to the charges paid by music companies or Artists. Music streaming apps also earn from the artists and production companies by offering a platform to release their tracks.
Requirements of a good Music Streaming Application
Now a day, it is not tough to design a music streaming application with innovative revenue models. You can find many audio streaming software and ready-made scripts on the internet. These scripts offer white-label customization to launch a music streaming website or application in no time. Why would you want to re-invent the wheel when you can buy a wheel and power-up your own racing car? Your aim is to launch a music streaming business, not music streaming software. Just Google the phrase, “Pandora Clone Script” or “Spotify Clone Script”, and you will find many of the solutions fitting your needs.
The challenge is to find a script competent enough to accommodate your visions with the business. Make sure to tally the following essentials while finding the best audio streaming software for your business-
1. The Browsing Experience
· Homepage layout
The audio streaming software would act as a base of your music streaming website or Application. It is necessary to confirm if it can offer fundamental requirements such as a customized home page. The homepage is the main touch point of your application, which also acts as a guide to assist users in finding their favorite tracks.
It must necessarily offer the space to feature the tracks with different browsing styles such as Top Tracks & Top Albums, New Tracks and & Albums, Top Artists & Browse Artists, Featured Playlist & Created Playlist, Browse Genres and Live Audio streaming through Radio channels. Moreover, each browsing category or track must display the thumbnails for easy segregation.
Below the fold part can be utilized to offer advanced curation and browsing options like music based on different moods, Option to browse tracks from different languages and regions etc. Moreover, the homepage must also offer the link to log-in or sign-up for a more personalized user experience.
· Search Tracks
In addition to the browsing based on curated categories, the homepage must offer the search bar to let users directly find their favorite tracks or albums. An efficient search engine would return all the relevant tracks from all the albums and playlists on the site or application.
· User Profiles: social media login
To offer an enhanced user experience without bothering the users with lengthy account registrations forms, the audio streaming platform must allow the users to log in using their Facebook, Google, Twitter or any popular social media account. Moreover, the data from social media handles will allow the app to curate more relevant playlists for users using their social media preferences.
2. The Listening Experience
· Music Player
The music player is the interface where users can control their browsing experience using the shortcuts to other interfaces on the app. They can access the options to create their own browsing experience using the controls such as Play, Pause, Forward, Rewind, Queue or Dismiss a track. The advanced options like Shuffle or Repeat mode also enhance the user experience. The options like volume control are fundamental; do not overlook it while searching for the best live audio streaming software.
· Curate Playlist
The software can allow the users to create their personalized playlist by adding their favorite tracks into it. The users must possess the access to create and even delete their personalized playlists. Moreover, users should also have permission to browse and add individual tracks to their custom playlist. Let us not forget the option to sort the tracks on grounds such as Alphabetical order, Download date, and Release date etc.
· Audio Equalizer
Audio equalizers enhance the listening experience by letting users tweak the sound modes. Most of the music-streaming apps utilize in-built equalizers in streaming devices (Mobile or Computers) to tweak the sound modes. However, it is wise to have a dedicated equalizer to let users control sound modes from in-app interface alone. The fundamental sound modes allow users to switch from the presets such as Mono mode, Stereo Mode, Rock Mode, Techno Mode, Classic mode, etc. These presets allow users to listen to the tracks from different genres in an optimized sound quality. You can also ask for advances features like Custom sound tweaking, separate controls for tweaking Bass and Treble boosting etc.
· Stream or Download Quality
One of the biggest challenges of running a streaming service is offering high-quality audio with varied internet bandwidth of the users spread across different regions on the globe. Not all users have access to high-speed internet. Streaming strictly in HD quality will curb your user base to ones with high-speed internet only. To extend your reach to all types of users, it is essential to let users browse your tracks even on slower internet connections.
This can be effectively done by dynamic switching of the audio quality or bit-rate based on the internet bandwidth of the users. Ask your live audio streaming software provider if their script is equipped with an audio-streaming server that supports dynamic bit-rate switching. For a customized user experience, the software should also allow users to choose if they want automatic stream-quality-control, or wish to fix it on HD or Normal quality.
3. The Admin Experience
Admin is an integral part of the streaming platform. Admin is responsible for managing the platform with unrestricted access to the back-end. Before finalizing, your online music streaming platform clone script, make sure to identify the following features exclusively for the admin users-
· Manage users
Access to see the number of users and their profiles on the platform.
· Manage transactions
Access to check the transactions done on the site.
· Manage Subscription Plans
Access to Add, Remove, and see the Subscription plans on the site.
· Manage Ads
Access to include different AdSense APIs to curate Advertisements on the site. For example, Google AdSense or Bing Ads API.
· Manage Playlists
Access to curate preset playlists for the users.
· Manage Featured tracks
Access to Add tracks to top-10 or any other featured category.
Mobile is the key
Mobile is the key to success in any business these days. If you are offering a web version of anything on the internet, it is always wise to develop a mobile app for the same. Having a website version as well as mobile app of your music streaming application will assist you in acquiring as many users to your business. I am certain that you would not want to lose the business from more than 230 million mobile users in the US alone. Many Audio Streaming software providers also provide ready-made native mobile apps for their audio streaming clone scripts. Just make sure you are in contact with the right one that offers all the above-mentioned requirements of a good music-streaming platform.