Technical and Legal Guidelines for Creating a Streaming App In 2020

Music and video streaming apps are gaining popularity due to the rise in demand for these platforms. People don’t have time to sit in front of a TV to watch videos and listen to music. Streaming apps enable you to enjoy music and watch videos on a portable device.

Due to the rise in demand, more and more businesses are looking to create streaming apps to make presence and money in this digital world. However, businesses creating streaming apps need to follow some technical and legal guidelines. Let us check out the legal and technical guidelines for creating streaming apps in 2020.

Legal Guidelines

Licensing is important

Every streaming service requires a content license that outlines the rules and regulations about what content they can show to the public. There are pre-defined digital supply chain standards set up by the Entertainment Merchants Association that every streaming service needs to follow.

Permission to use content

Streaming services don’t own the audio or video content they offer to their users. They offer other’s content on their apps or website to their users. Unless businesses use music or videos for non-commercial use, the law requires them to obtain permission from the copyright owner to stream their content for an audience.

Censored Content

Streaming apps also need to follow the regulations of censorship in their countries of their users. They cannot provide graphic content that is not permissible in a country. For example, many nations don’t allow the streaming or publishing of adult or horror video content in their country. It means that any streaming app needs to scrutinize the content according to the censor regulations of a country before offering it to its users in that country.

Technical guidelines

Registration and Authentication

Streaming apps that offer paid services to their audience need to offer a registration process for their users. Some apps offer free services, but for paid services, users need to create an account to register and make payments. There are apps like Spotify that offer free as well as paid services.

Music or Video Library

Streaming apps need to have a server-based library to offer their users access to the content, whether free or paid or partially free access.

Cloud Storage

Not all but streaming services offer cloud storage for their users, where they can store their favorite content and stream it anytime they want. Usually, the apps that offer paid services provide their users with cloud storage to save their music and videos.

Filters to find content

Users like to search the music and video content based on genre, artist, and their interest. Filters are convenient for sorting content based on artists, albums, year, and genre. Users can search the content of their favorite artists and choose the one they want to watch or listen to.

Social media integration

Many people like to share the content they like with their friends and family. Therefore, streaming apps need to offer social media buttons by which users can share their favorite content with others. When a user shares the content, other people come to know about the streaming app that attracts new users.

Payment Gateway

A music or video streaming app that offers paid services need to have a payment facility using which users can make payments. Users can take paid subscriptions by making payments using the methods provided in the app. Most of the apps integrate with other payment apps to provide the payment facility to their users.

Ads integration 

The free streaming apps show ads of third parties to earn money on the clicks and purchases. Usually, the ads are not shown to users who take paid subscriptions. So the apps earn money from free users through advertisements. The third parties pay streaming companies to show their ads on their app. Therefore, streaming apps need to have an ad integration facility in their apps to display the advertisements of third party businesses.

Integration with other devices

Some apps allow you to connect your devices with other devices like external headphones or mic. As come apps accept voice commands, you can use them with a kids microphone or a mic integrated headphone. For example, if you want to search the songs of your favorite artist, you can speak the name of the artist, and it displays the list of songs for you.

Final Words

These are the technical and legal guidelines to create a streaming app. All the streaming businesses need to follow these guidelines to run their apps in various countries. Moreover, they also need to follow the content policies to offer useful content to their users. Following the technical and legal guidelines helps the content streaming businesses to create better streaming apps and provide high-quality content to their users.