Mobile Application for Jazz Lovers: A Case Study

In the 21st century, mobile apps have proved to be one of the greatest technological advancements. In the year 2023, the mobile apps are expected to generate revenue exceeding $935 billion through application stores and in-app advertising and purchasing. While we have a large number of organizations who are working on the strategy to pull the best use of this technological trend, many companies are still unaware of how to successfully do so with application development. Such businesses when supported by an experienced offshore development company cultivate game-changing mobile application development processes.

There are six key phases to an effective development process flow. In this case study, we’ll bring your close attention to each one in-depth.

Regardless of the scope and size of your development project, this study will help your organization in reaching early success for enterprise application development.

Introduction to Music Mobile App Development

The music industry has been with us since the beginning of human evolution. Every nation, every culture owns some type of music, and Jazz music with its roots in blues and ragtime also has a story to tell.

The opportunities in the music industry are limitless.

According to the Grand View Research: "Music streaming market size was estimated at USD 34.53 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.4% from 2023 to 2030."

Aside from the profit generation, developing software apps is a great way to contribute to our global society.

Music streaming apps have grown in popularity as a result of the ease they provide to users. Let's have a look at these fascinating numbers. 

• By 2023, the global music streaming market is anticipated to be worth more than $10 billion.
• The average amount of profit earned per user is around $26.
• Spotify has a 36 percent share of the music streaming market.
• Apple boasts that 60 million people subscribe to Apple Music.

As you can see, the music streaming industry has a lot of potential. However, competing with services like Spotify or Pandora can be difficult. Platforms like these have taken over five years to build a user base and develop into what they are now. They spend a lot of money on machine learning and artificial intelligence to build music streaming apps that can recommend artists, tracks, and albums that are relevant to the user.

Conditions for Music App Licensing

Let's first get the legal things out of the way! To create a music app, you must first obtain licenses. In the United States, you can apply for a license with the 'American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers' to comply with copyright restrictions (ASCAP). 'Broadcast Music Incorporated' (BMI) is another alternative in the US.

Apply with 'European Stage Authors and Composers' if you are based in Europe (SESAC). For applications developed in India, the 'Phonographic Performance Ltd.' (PPL) issues the licenses. Therefore, make sure you consult the right authorities in your area.

Examples For Best Music Apps

When creating a music software like Spotify, you may require some design inspiration. I suggest you try out the following popular music apps:

Spotify: It is a prominent music streaming service. Users may follow musicians and sync music from their desktop computers. They can listen to music by browsing lists and searching for artists and albums. Users can save their favorite songs to their Spotify music collection and listen to them at a later time. It's compatible with Android and iOS, as well as the Windows operating system. Versions for the Kindle Fire, Windows desktop, and Mac desktop are also available.

SoundCloud: It is another famous music app that is compatible with both Android and iPhone. It's simple to find music and artists. Users can create their own playlists.

Shazam: This app listens to music and tells users the title and artist of the song. Users can save songs that they recognize as tags and share them with other users. Shazam is also compatible with both iOS and Android platforms.

TuneIn: This is a good mobile radio app. Local radio stations can be listened to by users. Enter a song or an artist, and TuneIn will show you all of the radio stations that broadcast that song or artist. This app isn't just for music; you can also listen to sports radio and podcasts using it.

All of these apps are available for free. "The top nine free music applications" is a good place to start if you want to see additional examples. 

In your planned app, you might wish to include a few unique features. As a result, you may need to evaluate relevant apps to come up with ideas. A few examples are as follows: 

If you want to give the ability to produce new music with synth, take a look at Jasuto. This is a modular synthesiser application developed for both iOS and Android. 

If you're looking for a real-time music streaming application, check out Pandora. 

If you're looking for a sequencer app to review, look no further than Yamaha Mobile Music Sequencer on the App Store or Sequencer Rack 1 on Google Play.

Background of Jazz Music

Jazz is a harmonically elegant music genre that has seen modifications over the past few decades, and it’s one of the most exemplary American-African art forms.

Jazz is a huge musical genre established by intricate harmonies, syncopated rhythms, and a strong emphasis on creativity. In the early 20th century, African-American musicians in New Orleans, Louisiana, created the jazz style. New Orleans, long synonymed as America's musical capitals, has a thriving ragtime and blues legacy. Early jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton bettered these blues and ragtime traditions, resulting in a whole new genre of American music.

Jazz quickly expanded across America, and New York City soon became the jazz capital of both the United States and the entire world. Mainstream music categories such as multi-modal music, pop, rock, funk, and even true avant-garde compositions have all been incorporated within the musical style.

What Is the Sound of Jazz Music?

Jazz combines elements of practically every musical genre, from blues to rock to classical. As a result, there are numerous sub-genres of Jazz Music. Nearly all types of jazz, particularly swing music, big band, bebop, and cool jazz, are united by a few central jazz components.

Distinctive rhythms: Traditional jazz rhythms are known for their swinging eighth notes, in which the first note in an eighth note pair is given more emphasis while the second note "swings" toward the following note. Latin jazz, on the other hand, is based on Caribbean music and does not swing, but it does have syncopated rhythms derived from Afro-Cuban traditions.

Harmonic sophistication: Unlike pop, country, and folk music, jazz rarely employs three-note chords. The tone of the seventh chord appears in nearly all jazz notes, and many incorporate tensions such as ninths, elevenths, and thirteenths.

Improvisation: This unifies practically all kinds of jazz music, perhaps more than anything else. All musicians of a jazz band may be asked to improvise over a jazz tune, from lead instrumentalists to rhythm segment players to lead singers.

Points to consider When Building a Music Streaming App

Before you start developing music streaming software, there are a few things to think about. We've highlighted four key topics that you should think about ahead of time.

Music Streaming Services Types

Let's figure out what kind of software you'd like to make. Three categories are frequently considered:

Music Library: Simply put, you can create a cloud-based music collection and make the music available to customers under the desired terms – paid subscriptions or free access.  Apple Music and Spotify are two examples. 

Cloud Storage: You allow people to save their music and listen to it whenever and wherever they choose.  AudioBox and Groove Music are two examples. 

Radio Stations: This type of program contains a number of radio stations that are organized by certain themes and may be streamed to a PC, home audio system, or any mobile device. Shoutcast and Apple Music are two examples.

Objectives Behind The Study

Planning and Analysis

At this point, your application concept begins to take the shape and develop as a working model. Recording the app usage standards and recording precise real-time requirements comes as the initial steps during the analysis and planning process.

On defining the app’s requirements, now one has to prepare a product plan. This includes prioritising and arranging mobile app needs into delivery objectives. If you're short on time, resources, or money, identify your minimum viable product (MVP) and prioritise it for the initial release. 

Identifying the skills required for the app development initiative is a crucial part of the planning phase. The mobile platforms iOS and Android, for example, have separate development technology prerequisites. If you want to create a mobile app that works on both iOS and Android, your mobile development team must comprise both iOS and Android developers.

Have you named your app yet? Just like the regular case of a website’s domain name, mobile apps or any application in this case, demands to have a unique name for each app store (Android & iOS). Make sure the name that you settle with isn’t already taken on any of the mobile application platforms.

UX/UI Design

Features Required in a Jazz Music Application

The market for music apps is quite competitive. To pull new users and continue to retain the present ones, one has to offer an ample amount of features in their music application. As per the statistic report conducted by statista on user preferences to app features, the following is the list of features:

1. A huge music library, in this case, is something that stores all types & styles of Jazz Music.
2. Multiple device compatibility.
3. Easy-to-understand UI (User Interface).
4. Ease of searching new styles of music
5. Option to keep curated playlists.
6. Options for users to remix their music and play on streaming libraries.
7. Options to stream music on smart home gadgets.
8. Displays featured music artists and their musical compositions.

Testing a Mobile Application

Quality assurance (QA) testing is an important element of the app development process because it makes sure  that the app is stable, functional, and secure for nominal use. Initially, you must build test cases that cover all elements of app testing in order to assure thorough QA testing of your app.

Test cases drive smartphone app testing in the same way that use cases do for mobile app development. Test cases are utilized to run test processes, track solutions for retesting, and document testing results for software quality evaluation. Involving the quality assurance (QA) team in the analysis and design stage is always regarded as the best practice during the entire app development process. Knowing your app's functional goals and needs will aid in the creation of accurate test cases.

To deliver a great music application, your platform should go through the following testing procedures.

User Experience Evaluation 

The final version must match the user experience defined by the app design team, which is a vital phase in mobile app testing. Your app's user interface or visuals, workflow, and interactivity are elements to be offered to your end consumers their initial impression of it. Make sure that your applications typefaces, style aspects, color palette, and padding between data, icon design, and navigation are all consistent. Making sure your software adheres to the original design principles will have a significant impact on user acceptance.

Testing of Functionality

The functioning of your mobile app must be adequate in order for it to be successful. It's tough to forecast the behavior and usage scenarios of every end-user. 

Your app's performance should be evaluated by as many users as feasible to cover as many reasonable testing scenarios as possible. In cases when two different individuals try the same functionality but get different results, you could be startled to find the actual problem. Users can submit the identical form, but they may provide different data, which could lead to the discovery of fault.

The objective of function testing is to make sure that your app's features and functioning are working properly for users. It's further classified into system testing (how effectively the program works as a whole) and unit testing (how effectively each particular feature works).

While planning to develop a mobile app for both iOS and Android customers, the functional testing should include a feature comparison between the two different versions of the app.

Performance Evaluation

For testing the performance of your app, you can utilize a variety of quantitative parameters.

How effectively does your app respond to requests from its users? 

How quickly do the app's displays load? 

Is your software generating memory leaks or depleting the phone's battery? 

Is your app making best use of network bandwidth? 

Is your app taking up a larger space than it should? 

Even if your app satisfies fundamental performance standards, simulate the highest number of concurrent users to test the app, API, and server for the load. Even when usage surges, your app should be able to handle the stress and perform well.

Security Testing

For music mobile apps, security is paramount. A system can be hacked by any conceivable vulnerability. Many enterprises pay independent companies to conduct extensive security testing on their apps. To secure your application, your QA and development teams can take a few basic steps.

If your app requires users to log in, both the device and the backend should keep track of these activities. When a user's activity session has been idle for an extended amount of time, the system should suspend itself. If your app saves user credentials on the device to make it easier for them to re-login, you'll need to be sure you're utilizing a reliable provider.

Managing Your Music App Development Project

We need to discuss how you may manage this development project before we work on how to design a music app. This is mostly a custom developer project. To successfully complete this project for your Jazz App Idea, you must first gather a capable team or find someone (outsourcing development company) to do it for you. 

Bring your project team on board 

In your team, you'll need the following: 

Business analysts

UX/UI designers

iOS and Android developers

QA Testers

A Project Manager

Your specifications and delivery timeline will determine the number of developers and testers needed. Mobile menu navigation patterns should be familiar to your designers. Because UI design is crucial for your app, you can examine this guide "Mobile navigation menu examples."

Questions that are Frequently Asked

What are the most effective music apps? 

Music streaming applications such as Spotify, Tidal, and SoundCloud are wonderful examples.

Is it possible to generate money with music apps? 

The most successful music apps generate millions of dollars each year. Spotify, for example, just paid $100,000 to podcaster Joe Rogan. 

Where to look for an experienced group of software developers? 

Yukti Solutions is a community of software developers who are experts in their fields. All of its developers are checked for quality and their work is tracked.

Conclusion

App development is a continuous process that will continue beyond the initial release as you gather feedback from users and add new features. Yukti Solutions is a well-known software development company in New Delhi, India. Yukti Solutions has worked with firms in a variety of industries and is serving hundreds of clients in Europe and the USA. For all of the software apps that we develop, we use the same quality procedure. Following this commercial app development approach, we also assure your app's huge success.

References

https://www.invonto.com/insights/mobile-app-development-process/

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/231145

https://www.devteam.space/blog/how-to-develop-a-music-application/

https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/how-to-create-a-music-streaming-app

Statista Report on user’s preferences.