8 reasons to outsource the creation of your music streaming platform

When you decide to create your own music streaming service, you have two options: develop it yourself (internally) or outsource your creation.

Each of the two options has its advantages and disadvantages. But here we will explain why using a service provider specialising in the development of music streaming services or platforms is an excellent alternative including costs, time, quality, security and expertise.

1. Reduction of costs

By outsourcing, you will be in the hands of industry experts, experienced in the implementation of music streaming platforms. Starting with an existing technology developed specifically for this purpose, you avoid coding an existing system from scratch. No need to reinvent the wheel, when you can fast-track your project.

In contrast, developing your own platform internally, or using a third party who might specialise in coding but not specifically in music streaming, will allow for more flexibility. However is also requires significant budget and the time to develop the platform. Based on our experience, when you include the development, the maintenance, the updates, and the servers you can quickly reach a 7 figure budget.

Providers offering this type of turnkey music technology benefit from significant economies of scale by multiplying their customers and sharing the use of their platform.

Another critical point to consider is that even though you’ve reduced your expenses by using a specialist provider, you will still be able to scale to the capacity you require. If you go it alone, do you have the expertise to manage all the infrastructure and requirements to host an enterprise solution? What happens if you suddenly grow the way you have budgeted? How will you handle that capacity?

Knowing your fees in advance allows you to adapt your budget and avoid unpleasant surprises.

2. Saving time

We are not all coding and development experts. By outsourcing the creation of your music streaming platform, you can avoid having to dive too deep into technology hassles, allowing you to focus on your core business instead, as well as on monetisation, partnerships and marketing.

In addition to the development itself, you need to think about negotiating content licensing, creating technical specifications, recruiting a development team familiar with music streaming, choosing a computer language, getting the financial reporting to rights-holders in place, finding the best service providers for your payment system, servers, and CDN (content delivery network)....the list goes on. All of these items (and more) are critical to the success of your app, but can take a great deal of time and effort to investigate and put in place.

Going through an existing white label technology provider will save you all that time and frustration. As an example,Tuned Global have been able to help customers launch music streaming services offering millions of music tracks in only a few weeks. By contrast, some companies that have chosen to develop their own platform can take 1 year or more to complete the project and launch their product. Who has that sort of time?!

3. Optimising the quality of your service

When you create your own music platform, you risk making mistakes and creating a product that doesn’t meet your customers’ expectations. You will need to test, learn and iterate along the way. However, when you go through an expert in the music sector, you benefit from all of their previous testing, learning and improvements.

The creation of a music streaming platform requires a very specific UX/UI expertise, which is very different from designing a simple website or an e-commerce platform. Using the tools of a specialised company, with teams coming from the music and entertainment sectors, can add value to your project.

In addition, from a performance point of view, going through a music technology service provider allows you to benefit from high quality, efficient infrastructure, thereby improving the quality of your offering.

Finally, using an existing turnkey music solution, you will benefit from the latest technology innovations. They already have millions of people using their music technology and they take this experience and the users’ feedback to improve their product each day. You have the opportunity to use their expertise to create a quality product from day 1 and avoid pitfalls and bugs already experienced. It’s like having a platform already tested and vetted by a very large number of users.

When you know the price of consumer studies, and other customer tests, it can quickly be worth it!

4. Technical problems and maintenance

In case of breakdown or technical problems, you can rely on your third party music service provider to solve the problem in a short time frame, because it is part of their service and it’s all about their reputation.

On the other hand, if you go it alone, will you have an internal technical team available at all times to solve problems immediately?

Maintaining an on-demand service that needs to be available at all times can be quite a burden. If you internalise the creation of your platform, you will need to consider how to manage this requirement, which may slow you down in the development of functionality.

5. A guarantee of security

Security is expensive. If you build your own applications and platform you will need to comply with the requirements of the rights holders. This includes everything from where and how the assets are stored, through to how you deliver and protect them from misuse. Outsourcing your music streaming platform allows you to comply with these requirements from the outset and hence not only get to market quicker but significantly lower the legal risks to your service.

6. Product evolution

Building the platform is only half the job - as technology evolves, regular updates are required. Devices, operating systems and browsers are upgraded constantly, so for your app to remain functional, it's important to keep it current. With a white label music service provider, this is generally part of the package, which means less stress for you.

Another great advantage of choosing the provider of a turnkey music service, especially in a PAAS (Platform As A Service) model, is to be able to benefit from product upgrades and evolution. Providers offering this type of technology benefit from significant economies of scale and are able to share the release of new features with all of their clients. Thus, your platform will have new features without additional costs. In a way, you are outsourcing the R&D of your service. And in return your users will be delighted with new features and releases and are more likely to stick to your service.

7. Sustainability of your service

In general, using a service provider to create your music streaming platform allows you to trust in the future. If you create your own project there is always the risk that your developers or team will leave, and it may be difficult for another team to pick up where they left off. There are many examples globally of key stakeholders no longer being with a company and a music service fading away due to the lack of knowledge and internal expertise.

Moreover, you will always be able to scale your solution, because suppliers of specialised music solutions manage projects of different sizes and are able to support you in your future growth.

Delegating the technical part of your project to professionals can be very reassuring for your stakeholders and your investors!

8. Access a team of industry experts

Last but not least, by using a provider specialised in music streaming technology you will benefit from a team of industry experts. If you are new in the industry, a good provider will be able to help you with your business model, thanks to their deep understanding of the market. They can also introduce you to music labels if licensing is required, or give you marketing recommendations specific to a digital music service.

Of course you can learn all this by yourself, but it will take time - which is money. A traditional software development company won’t be able to deliver this type of industry-specialised support. Instead, we recommend that you take advantage of the knowledge of people who have done this many time before, and don't make mistakes already made.

As you can see, starting an on-demand music service is more complex than you might think. Knowing how to surround yourself with the right people is certainly the key to success, at least on the technical side. At Tuned Global, we have developed the music streaming expertise and a turnkey music platform with more than 20 services launched globally and millions of listeners using them.

From our point of view, outsourcing the technical aspect is essential, so that you can focus on the real issues: monetisation, editorial and marketing actions around your offer.

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