How to Build an Android Music Streaming App: A Step-by-Step Guide

Creating a mobile app from scratch is rewarding but notoriously difficult. In this article, we walk you through the process from A to Z, from wireframes to successful production deployment. Each step of the way, the article has been updated to incorporate changes that have been made following each step. So if you screw up a step, you can still follow along and learn from our mistakes.

Define your app's concept

The first thing to do is to determine what you want your app to do. Then, work backward to determine what data you need to access to get that task done. With Android, this process isn't just determining what you want your app to do, but also what you want it to look like. There are a number of tools for building iOS and Android apps and they often go hand-in-hand. The key to both is to choose the right tool for the job, and pick one that isn't trying to do everything for you. For example, there are design programs for iOS and Android, but one of them isn't going to be good for prototyping and testing your designs. In the case of Android, the big requirement is that your app be able to handle streaming and audio, but you'll probably want a different design program for that.

Sketch out the app's design

With your programming team in place, take a day or two to sketch out the look and feel of the app. Any semblance of a mobile app should be out of the question: You're making a desktop application! (Unless you're building an iPad app, but that's a different conversation.) Now that you have a design, start sketching out the relevant code and activities for your app. Start with a rather basic app, and gradually add more functionality as you grow your user base. To help you figure out where to put your activities and transitions, we recommend using Tasker and ReactiveMonkey as a starting point. As you begin building, it will be useful to organize your code using the Arc Toolkit.

Choose the right tools for the job

To understand how to build an Android music streaming app, we need to first determine what we are going to build. Building a simple music player is not the right goal; it would be better to build an app that is capable of playing a large range of music across a wide range of genres. For this, you need to build an Android music streaming app. Developers typically work on Android apps using Android Studio or Android Emulator. Although both are powerful, the platform's emulator might not be enough to run more demanding apps (or apps with native API support). In addition, Android Studio is built for the development of desktop apps; it does not really support building Android apps.

Pick a tech stack

Before we start the process, I like to start with a few research questions. These help me narrow my focus and set me up for success. They include: What do you need your app to do? How many users will this app be useful for? Which product features do you think will matter the most? How much memory is available for development? All of these questions are focused on planning and strategy, so they don't always have direct applications to application design. However, one of the first questions that comes up during the technical design process is: how will we develop the app? Whether we choose to develop natively on mobile, via a web server, or in a hybrid model, having an idea of how the app will work at different levels will help us shape the right software stack.

Design the UI of the app

Open a blank document and pen. What do you want your app to do? Do you want to make it educational? Play games? Make it an efficient music manager? Note that we will not use our creativity, and we will stick to the structure and elements required to build a more complex app like “TicToc”. Start by drawing the title bar of the app. Then, include several other UI elements to describe the app. For example, choose a color for the elements, and write out what elements will stand out in that color. For example, let’s say that our app is a music streaming service. If you’re a fan of music, you may want to include lyrics and information about the artists. Likewise, if you are an expert on African music, you may include the countries of origin of the various music styles.

Implement some backend

To be effective, an Android app has to be accessible and responsive from virtually anywhere, so your backend has to be fast. A server that's capable of hosting a hundred requests per second is only useful if the phone it's running on is (at minimum) able to handle about thirty. (Many modern Android phones can handle upwards of eight hundred requests per second, while some Samsung devices can handle up to a thousand requests per second. Others are not so fortunate.) We used Heroku to host our server, with a separate database for each project. (Note that the rest of this article will assume you're using a 64-bit Linux machine, with PHP 5.5 or later. Android is Linux-only for now.

Make sure everything looks good on different devices

We suggest launching each of your components simultaneously. If you use Google Play to distribute your application, this is easy. Download your app package and launch the Play Store. If you distribute your application through an installr, then this is more complex. Set up the device, choose a package manager, and pick your local or remote repository from your Git directory. If you chose to share your source code on GitHub and contribute to an open source project, then you can add it to your repository and use that to package your application for multiple Android platforms. If you chose to use an installr, then you can use the share option in your device's settings and select the installer for your target device. Exploring the device.

Subsection 7.1 - Test on different devices

When you're developing for Android, you have a ton of different devices you can test your app on. You can test on your own Android device. But if you want to test your app on as many phones, tablets, and operating systems as you can possibly test on, you have to test on a large pool of devices. Thankfully, there is a handy tool called AVD (Android Virtual Device), which simulates various devices on your own device. In order to use it on your own device, you need to download the AVD SDK. Conclusion After you've mastered the basics, you can move on to a variety of other great resources. Click on the links to check out related articles and resources.

Subsection 7.2 - Check for bugs

Working with mobile devices in a mobile first, mobile only way, is challenging. There are quite a few factors that play into it, such as the client being unable to connect to a mobile data network, or even if the device hasn't been updated in the last few months. Check the following requirements prior to applying for this project: Android OS Version: 4.0.3 and up Supported Operating System: Android 4.0.3 and up Mobile data network speed: 60Mb Devices that support CDMA: non-CDMA (Verizon, AT&T) Device's Network: MMS is supported by Android Please follow this step by step process and add your own advice to the list: Step 1: Create an empty project To create a new Android project with sound you'll need to be using the Android Studio IDE.

Publish your app

The first step is to publish your app. The procedure varies depending on the operating system and hardware. For iOS, for example, you can submit your app to Apple for review as an update to an existing app. After review, the app can be published directly to the app store, where your customers will download it. If the app is a desktop app, it is usually packaged as a simple ZIP file. If you are creating a full-fledged web app, it will usually be a web application. The author shows you how to use Android Studio to build a simple game. Android applications are primarily distributed by the Google Play Store. The Play Store is the central destination for Android apps. Each app has its own listing, and for each app, a customer will find its listing.