Developing streaming services: step by step to a real-time platform

We provide services for the development of unique solutions for streaming video, audio and interactive online broadcasts, as well as additional programs for any task. Our goal is to create a high-quality product that fully meets your business needs and current market trends. To achieve this, we use innovative technologies and the extensive experience of our specialists.

A streaming service is an online platform or program that allows you to listen to music, watch videos, movies, TV series and game broadcasts in real time, without the need to first download to your device.

In recent years, streaming services have completely changed the culture of content consumption and made it more accessible than ever before. Users no longer need to worry about having enough free space on their device or scrolling through many sites in search of their favorite track – just install one program on their smartphone that gives access to a multimillion-dollar library of audio and video files available online.

Convenience and easy access to content have made streaming services very popular in the market, and their popularity continues to grow. According to Music Business Worldwide, in 2023 the total number of online streams of tracks, including video clips, grew by 33.7% and reached 7.1 trillion for the first time. At the same time, researchers from Sandvine Incorporated concluded that 60% of all Internet traffic is video streaming, a significant part of which is streaming of news, TV shows, sports and series.

Let’s take a look at the most popular streaming platforms, whose innovative capabilities should be taken into account when planning your own product in this industry.

Spotify

A service for listening to digital music, which originates the very idea of audio streaming. Spotify was released back in 2006 and today is the absolute market leader. The platform’s catalog contains more than 50 million tracks, 4 billion playlists, and the number of its regular subscribers has already exceeded 226 million.

Why Spotify is so popular:

• Makes it possible to legally listen to tracks from a huge catalog.
• Contains many albums not available on other platforms.
• It uses unique track selection algorithms that are almost perfectly adjusted to the individual preferences of each listener.
• Provides many selections, thematic playlists and charts.
• Conveniently implemented synchronization – you can start listening to a song on one device and continue on another.

YouTube

Another leader, but in the field of video streaming. YouTube allows users to create, view and share videos, live broadcast and much more. Moreover, almost all functionality is available to users for free.

Reasons for the popularity of YouTube:

• Huge catalog – on the platform you can find videos on almost any topic: from educational videos and clips, to authorities and documentaries.
• Ability to create and monetize content.
• The largest database of free video content.
• Intuitive design and wide possibilities.
• Watch videos even with poor Internet coverage.

Netflix

American entertainment service for watching movies and TV series based on streaming data. Netflix not only broadcasts videos, but also finances filming, thanks to which it produces many unique and niche projects that would hardly be able to make it to the big screen, which makes many users grateful.

Here are some other features of Netflix that make it popular:

• Possibility of synchronized viewing on different devices.
• Great base of unique content.
• The catalog and recommendations on the benefits are well developed.
• The ability to watch the full season at once, and not one episode over several days, as on similar services.

Apple TV+

Unlike many other streaming services, Apple TV+ produces content independently: films, series and shows, so here you can watch projects that are definitely not available anywhere else. Moreover, each film is a separate work of art with the best stars, perfect picture in 4K HDR resolution and high-quality sound that supports spatial audio.

Reasons for the popularity of Apple TV+:

• Large library of unique video content.
• Full synchronization with any Apple devices.
• Large trial subscription – up to 3 months of free viewing.
• Impeccable UI/UX design that sets trends for the entire industry.

It may seem that the data streaming market has already been formed and there is no point in investing in the development of a new product – to withstand competition, for example, with YouTube, is a task. But in reality this is not the case at all.

Each user has a unique benefit when it comes to listening to music or watching videos online, so there is no perfect streaming service that suits everyone’s needs. For example, the creators of the Twitch service decided to develop the most niche platform possible and focused on the gamer segment, which allowed them to avoid high competition at the start and gain a significant market share. And now the YouTube corporation is thinking about developing something similar in order to gain access to at least part of this audience. Another example is the social network TikTok, which launched a trend for short videos, which other platforms considered market leaders quickly began to adopt.

You need to understand that the market for streaming services is simply huge, and if you have an innovative idea to launch a new product, it’s definitely worth investing in its implementation. We, as a team of qualified developers, can take on its full technical implementation, further support and development.

Our team covers the full cycle of technical development of streaming services: from market research and functional design to QA testing and project release. Depending on your plans and ideas, we can develop for the web platform, IOS and Android mobile devices, as well as the desktop version for PCs and laptops. However, regardless of which platform you focus on first, the stages of project development will be similar, so we suggest taking a closer look at them.

Requirements analysis and market research

We start with a deep study of your idea, research of your main competitors and the market situation. This helps determine:

• Who is the target audience of the project?
• What are the needs and benefits of GA.
• Strengths and weaknesses of potential competitors.
• What functionality needs to be implemented to attract the audience and offer them a unique user experience.

Architecture planning

We are developing an interactive prototype consisting of a user path map, navigation structure and interface warframes. This allows you to understand how content will be organized on the platform and how users will interact with it.

Using mockup, designers evaluate effectiveness and optimize UX. Their goal is to create the most logical and understandable structure of the program, so that when opened, the user instantly understands what he needs to do. It is important that this work is carried out before technical development begins, which saves a significant amount of time and resources.

The next step is to build a technical architecture. Developers determine which server solutions, cloud technologies and databases will be used in the project, which use programming languages and frameworks, as well as the necessary integrations with external services. Our team can work with any stack, so when choosing technologies we focus solely on the needs of the project.

Development and integration

The team begins the technical implementation of the streaming service. This stage consists of three main parts:

• Backend development – creation of the server part of the project, ensuring the functionality of the platform, secure data storage, content transfer, subscription management and analytics collection.
• Frontend development is the development of a user interface with which users interact. He is responsible for providing convenient access to content, navigation and correct display of the platform on all devices.
• Integrations – performing integrations with third-party services that will make using the platform more convenient and functional. For example, this could be integration with payment systems – for purchasing content and paying for tariff plans within the program or with external recommendation systems.

Testing and Debugging

QA engineers conduct thorough testing of the streaming service: the quality of the video/audio data stream, including with poor Internet coverage, loading speed, correct operation of the platform on different devices, and other parameters. Identified problems are documented and corrected by the developers, ensuring that the final design contains a minimum of errors and provides visitors with a positive user experience.

Launch and development

The streaming platform is deployed on a public server and becomes available to users. In parallel, our business analysts monitor, track feedback and collect data for further development of the service in accordance with the preferences of the audience and the client’s business goals.

Despite the apparent simplicity and aesthetics of most streaming services, such projects are characterized by a large amount of complex functionality. At the same time, access rights to individual modules also depend on the user’s role – content provider, viewer or administrator.

Functional complexity also affects development time and cost – the larger and more complex the platform, the longer and more expensive its technical implementation will be. Therefore, in order to reduce the burden on the budget and bring the service to release as quickly as possible, we recommend starting development with an MVP – a minimum viable product that has only the main modules.

In such an assembly, the service is able to successfully operate in the market, receive registration and generate its first income. In parallel with this, the development team is focusing its efforts on further development and addition of unique functions, including based on user feedback. This approach allows you to avoid many mistakes and create a product that fully meets consumer expectations.

Here is the minimum set of functionality that will be required to launch a streaming service at the very beginning:

• User registration and authentication. Ability to create an account with the ability to register and log in via email and social networks.
• Personal Area. You must create at least two types of user profile – viewer and administrator. If your platform will also provide the ability to create and edit your own content, a third type is required – a content writer with the appropriate functionality.
• Playing content. Player for streaming video and audio, supporting various resolutions and formats – HD, 4K, HDR, etc. You can also add the ability to overlay subtitles and automatically adjust the quality depending on the Internet speed.
• Video/audio search. As the service begins to gain popularity, the amount of content and user requests will grow exponentially. This can complicate navigation, and to avoid such a problem, you should take care in advance of the system of categories, tags and autocorrelation of text queries.
• Video library. These are a kind of “shelves” for users where the videos, films or tracks they like will be stored. You can also sync it with the Recommendations section, which will work based on the viewer’s previous swear words or with the help of artificial intelligence.
• Payment and subscriptions. This functionality is implemented depending on the monetization model. For example, if you provide access to content through paid subscriptions, the user should be able to purchase it within the program.
• Monetization. A section for content authors, where they can configure the display of advertising when watching a video, include a banner, etc.
• Collection of analytics. Another module for content authors that will help track the number of views/listenings, target audience and other statistics necessary for the successful development of the channel.
• Service administration. A set of tools for administering a streaming service, monitoring processes on the platform, content moderation with the ability to obtain advanced analytics in real time.

If you have an idea for launching an innovative streaming service and want to entrust the technical implementation of the project to our team, let’s get started. For this:

• Leave a request on the website or contact us in another convenient way.
• We will review your request and contact you to answer questions and discuss details.
• We will calculate the exact deadlines and budget, which we will fix in the contract.
• Let’s start developing a project in accordance with your requirements.

Why should you choose AVADA MEDIA to create a streaming service?

AVADA MEDIA is more than just a software developer, we are focused on achieving your success. To do this, we provide the most flexible and transparent terms of cooperation – from us you can order the development of a streaming service outsourced, hire qualified developers using the outstaffing model, or form a dedicated team of experienced engineers with well-established communication, which will work under your full leadership.

Write to us and we will help you choose a cooperation model that best suits your project.