Streaming has not only revolutionised the way people find music and share it, but also the way they listen to it – from passive listening to active participation. Freelance artists, DJs, podcasters, bedroom producers. You name it, everyone craves a place to upload, share, and establish an audience without paying dues through traditional labels, which is probably why there are now so many businesses that want to create a music app like SoundCloud, instead of just another typical streaming service.
SoundCloud did something very specific. It created an easy way for creators to upload audio, gave listeners the tools to find underground talent, and built a social layer on top of streaming. Comments on waveforms, reposts, and followings, playlists, and creator profiles turned the act of listening into a social activity. If you are going to make a music app like SoundCloud, it is not just about building a repository of sound but an ecosystem that constitutes creators and fans interacting.
For product owners and founders, that entails thinking about community, virality, and user-generated content from day one. The app would need to simplify music uploading, allow users to explore niche genres and follow their creators, and surface the perfect content for every person. Meanwhile, it needs to process rights management, creator payments, and moderation of UGC in order to keep the platform safe, legal, and brandable.
This article discusses the key functionality blocks, social discovery features, user-generated content moderations, and tech choices you would need to make if you were going to build a music app like SoundCloud that can actually scale.
Also Read: Music Streaming Statistics
Core Concept: Why Are People Tripping Over SoundCloud When It’s Just Spotify With Free Music?
Hitting the features and tech is nice, but it’s helpful to remember what actually sets SoundCloud apart from something like Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music. If your ambition is to make a music app like SoundCloud (and not just another playlist-based streaming service), this distinction will inform your product strategy.
The first big difference is that SoundCloud is creator-first. PVOD services platforms mainly make available licensed catalogues from both labels and aggregators. SoundCloud, by comparison, began as a place for anyone to upload a track, share a demo, try out an idea, or post a remix. It makes upload workflows, encoding, storage, and creator dashboards the very heart of your product.
The second major difference is discovery. Rather than favoring just editorial playlists or algorithmic radio, SoundCloud also pushes users to follow artists, repost tracks, like, and comment on audio. The social graph is now as critical as the recommendation engine.” But other features around follows, feeds, and reposts to comments and shareable links will also matter as much as search and playlists for you if you are thinking of building a music app like SoundCloud.
The third leg is user-generated content at scale. “And the SoundCloud-style platform has to be able to take in thousands of new uploads every day, at all kinds of quality levels and in different formats, and then normalise them into a consistent listening experience. It also requires tools to flag such violation content or posts containing hate speech, sexual content , and spam. That’s why a realistic plan for building a music app like SoundCloud would have to come with some serious proposal for UGC moderation — algorithmic and human.
SoundCloud, at long last, is listening in the right direction for you to shape your identity with it. Creator profiles, avatars, bios, and links, as well as discographies, offer context to each track. Listeners cobble their identities as listeners from likes, reposts, and playlists. That’s why your app roadmap should be a mix of those three at all times: audio experience, creator tools, and community mechanics.
Key Features to Consider for a Music App Like SoundCloud
When you think about creating a music app like SoundCloud, the functionality has to be way bigger than just traditional streaming. SoundCloud is successful because it combines uploading, listening, discovery, and social interaction into a single seamless experience. Your app needs to support the full cycle of this process for creators and listeners. The following are the fundamental features that define what is at the heart of the product.
Creator Uploads and Audio Management
Uploading is the lifeblood of a SoundCloud-type service. Ability to upload tracks from either mobile or desktop, with the server encoding and converting wave forms of all uploads (see codecentric/spring-boot-todo for instructions/code). Add Track metadata extraction and normalisation requirements as features. The above-the-line process must be relatively straightforward and free of friction, so that the creative can be shared ASAP. That is, supporting multiple file formats, allowing edits post-upload, and offering creators what Drexler and Rodrigues hope are detailed metadata fields, including title, genre, mood, BPM, and tags.
Personalised Feed and Social Discovery
SoundCloud’s discovery is the result of a social engine, not retail-style curation. In order to create an app like SoundCloud, you require a personalized feed, and it depends on follows, reposts, likes, and user interaction. The feed should feel active, featuring new creator uploads from creators the listener follows; reposts from friends sharing out their favorite clips; and curatorial picks that cater to the listener’s tastes. A robust social layer supercharges virality, retention, and creator growth.
Waveform Player with Real-Time Interaction
One of the distinctive SoundCloud features is an interactive waveform player. Peaks and valleys are visible to the user, who can also comment at a specific timestamp (and track the song visually). A military-style waveform engine has a flow that takes you through music as an art form! Instead, it shows up as a visual anchor for your trip through audio.
Playlists, Libraries, and Favourites
People expect tools to save, organise, and return to content. “Playlists, favourites, liked tracks” and history logs enable a highly personalised library. Number of playlists added to: For a creator, if your tracks were added to other playlists, it increases discoveries & algorithm visibility. This one is a crucial factor when creating a music app like SoundCloud, as it enhances the feedback loop between making and listening.
Powerful Search and Genre Exploration
Unlike traditional catalogues having neatly tagged contents, UGC portals suffer from noisy metadata. Your search engine has to deal with different naming conventions, underground scenes, remixes, unofficial edits, and music that’s way out there. Genre, bpm, mood, and popularity filters help with discoverability by artist and upload date. They might not be your thing, but for localisation purposes, UK-specific genres like UKG, grime, drill, jungle, and DnB can also help.
Engaging Social Discovery and Community Features
In other words, a SoundCloud-style platform eats on social. Without these elements, a UGC app would feel flat and transactional. If you’re trying to create a music app like SoundCloud, community dynamics will have to add depth to the listening experience, and creators should be able to grow their audiences in new ways.
Follows, Reposts, and Activity Feeds
It also allows listeners to follow creators, so they can be notified of new uploads as soon as they are posted. Reposts help a track reach beyond its original creator’s fan base, providing up-and-coming artists an opportunity to go viral. Activity feeds, with likes, reposts, and interactions, keep users engaged when they aren’t actively listening. That social circulation is what sets SoundCloud apart from other music apps.
Track Comments and Timestamped Chats
Empowering listeners to make comments on tracks, particularly at certain points in time, facilitates a shared listening experience. These comments can draw attention to drops, lyrics, or transitions and make up a micro-community around each track. I made this to promote an emotional connection and repeated listens.
Listener-to-Creator Direct Messaging
Establishing personal connections between creators and their audience helps foster platform loyalty over the long haul. Text, emojis, track sharing, and links can be shared within a messaging system to facilitate collaboration, feedback, and community. Messaging also needs to be built with moderation tools so it doesn’t get abused.
Profiles for Creators and Listeners
Profiles act as identity hubs. Creator profiles feature uploads, stats, playlists, social links, and the number of followers. Listener profiles follow favourite songs, playlists, and interactions. A great profile system allows your app to build a vibrant ecosystem around you, lending credibility.
Creator uploads, rights management, and monetization methods
This creator-first ecosystem would necessitate platforms to manage rights, disburse royalties, and reward creators for their work. Retention is being impacted by these systems, as they determine how appealing your platform becomes for new aspiring artists. No plan to create a music app like SoundCloud can exist without a transparent rights and monetisation strategy.
Also read: Music Streaming App Monetization
Copyright Handling and Automated Detection
UGC platforms need to shield themselves against any copyright infringements. Content ID systems, which listen to uploaded audio in order to detect matches and flag infringing material, are invaluable. Machines minimize legal risk, and right holders receive fair remuneration.
Creator Analytics and Performance Insights
Artists, too, are curious about how their tracks do. Play, like, and repost counts, as well as listener geographies, retention, and engagement trends dashboards, give creators the ability to hone their art and find a larger audience. Insights also motivate creators to post more regularly.
Monetisation Options for Creators
For a competitive platform, consider monetizing in various ways:
- Fan support and tips
- paid subscriptions for exclusive tracks
- ad-supported payouts
- premium upload plans with more storage
- brand sponsorships and promotional amplification
More revenue paths, more creators will approach your apps as a professional tool, not a hobby.
Licensing and Partnership Models
If you are interested in supporting both UGC and licensed content, you may require contracts with record labels, publishers, or aggregators. There are a lot of rights governance and distribution agreements that need to be navigated in the case of hybrid catalogues, more so if you want to operate in the UK.
Content Moderation at Scale: How, Why, and Abuse Prevention . Oriental Trading’s world-class UGC moderation staff will share its Personify community-based approach to implementing tools [Read More] about speaker McGovern Room – 07/25.
User-generated content is at the heart of these platforms, but it also poses the most significant operational and legal risks. That’s why if you create a music app similar to SoundCloud, you should establish a moderation system that protects users, copyright, and the platform itself , but does not get in the way of creators.
Automatic content scan and copyright detection
Moderation’s Initial Layer Needs to be Automated. Through audio fingerprinting, waveform comparison, metadata scanning, and cross-referencing with upcoming artist data and external copyright databases, the system looks for suspect tracks before they are released. This minimizes conflicts, takedowns, and the threat of breaking music licensing laws. For a UK-centric launch, automated copyright detection also needs to understand PRS, PPL, MCPS, and UK rights landscapes.
Human moderating is available for sensitive/flagged content.
AI cannot detect everything. For reported content, disputed claims, on-platform disputes, or inappropriate uploads, you require a human moderation process. Moderators have to read the context, determine whether the content violates policy or not, and take action immediately. Human moderation (I couldn’t even find BeanQueen’s comment, btw) helps avoid these kinds of situations from occurring. A clear escalation and documenting procedure makes it less likely that individual mod behavior will be inconsistent, and legally, it is a protection to the platform.
Community Reporting and Creator Controls
Both listeners and artists will have the capability to report songs, comments, messages, or profiles. These reports flow into an internal moderation dashboard with the priority level determined by severity. There could also be other tools , such as comment moderation for their own tracks by creators, blocking of users, or hiding a particular interaction that’s inappropriate.
Clear Upload Guidelines and the Implementation of Regulation
To reduce confusion and appeals, your site should make its rules about uploads, copyright, AI-generated content (videos and music), explicit material (e.g., videos of “adult nature”), hate speech, and harassment spam clear. Enforcement must be consistent. Trust is essential when you reimagine a music app like SoundCloud; creators need to feel supported, and listeners safe.
Technical Architecture for a Music App Similar to SoundCloud
A SoundCloud-like platform is not technically trivial. In sequencing, you need a (really beefy) audio pipeline, efficient storage and playback engines, and big engines for recommendations. Here is the architectural skeleton on which you would be able to build a music app like Soundcloud and scale it without failure.
Microservices-Based Architecture for Scalability
Decomposing string-processing services into microservices enables the app to scale out or in each independent component. Upload services, playback services, search engines, recommendation engines, and social functions can expand based on use cases. This helps to keep your performance stable despite an increased number of uploads.
Upon submission of a track, the system needs to:
- Convert it to formats in multiple playback (AAC, MP3, OGG)
- Normalise volume levels
- Generate the waveform visual
- Create low-latency preview files
- Handle metadata parsing
There is an independent audio post-production line that allows quick response and stable quality.
Cloud Storage and CDN Delivery
Some of the drawbacks to UGC include the requirement for a very large storage capacity. Cloud solutions such as AWS S3 or Google Cloud Storage offer auto-scaling, redundancy, and security. A worldwide CDN means tracks are available with minimal buffering in the UK and around the globe. This enhances listening and minimizes buffering.
Searching and Discovering Using Elasticsearch or OpenSearch
And to process millions of tracks, tags, genres, and mood labels – not to mention user behaviours – the search engine needs to be sophisticated. Audio metadata, creator profiles, playlists , tags, and interactions can be indexed in real time with tools like Elasticsearch or OpenSearch for fast discovery.
Social Graph + Recommendation Engine
The proposed recommendation system is a combination of collaborative filtering, content-based similarity, and social signals. When developing a music app like SoundCloud, your algorithm should ask:
follows
reposts
likes
listening behaviour
creator similarity
track metadata
It creates a customised listening experience without overburdening the audience.
Cost, timeline, and team composition of the development process
For entrepreneurs, businesspeople, or enterprise owners – Budget planning is the key, especially if you are thinking of building a music app like SoundCloud. Prices will vary based on features, scale, security, moderation workflows, and design complexity. The following are example figures of factored-out for the UK and hybrid development models.
Price to Create an App Like SoundCloud(Base version)
The Lite MVP that contains uploads, profiles, playlists, and feed & playback:
£40,000 – £75,000
Best for early startups testing market demand.
Price of a Mid-Level Full-Feature Platform
This means that you have access to the waveform player, discovery engine, advanced search, moderation, creator tools, and scalable backend from day one:
£80,000 – £150,000
This tier would suit serious proptech-style or media businesses entering the audio market.
Price for a SoundCloud Alternative for Serious Users
At this stage, the platform offers AI-moderation, advanced recommendations, multilevel monetisation, in addition to data analytics features, rich content storage, and global scalability:
£180,000 – £350,000+
These platforms require long-term infra investments, DevOps, audio engineering, and compliance.
Timeline Estimate
Depending on the scope:
- MVP: 10–16 weeks
- Mid-level platform: 20–28 weeks
- Enterprise SoundCloud-like system: 32–50+ weeks
Timeline grows linearly larger with the rise of UGC, moderation needs, and audio processing complexity.
Compliance, Licensing, and Legal Considerations
Retailers, by contrast, are among the least regulated of digital businesses because music is one of the most heavily regulated sectors of digital business, as overviewed in this paper; it is now certainly a core concern when designing music-related services like SoundCloud.
Licensing Bodies and Rights Organisations in the UK
You may need to work with:
- PRS for Music
- PPL
- MCPS
- Mechanical licensing partners
- Optional sync rights distributors
Even for a UGC, rights management is a must to prevent lawsuits.
GDPR and User Privacy
The platform stores:
- user identities
- audio files
- chat logs
- listening behaviour
This means we need GDPR consent flows, storage practices for data stored in user accounts, deletion options for users, encryption, etc.
Content Moderation and Safe Community Guidelines
The legal burden ratchets up when UGC is in play. Clear moderation guidelines and rapid reputational risk removal workflows are crucial to minimize legal risk and protect users.
Growth Of The Service: Performance, Memory , And Suggestions
An app that’s SoundCloud-like needs to scale obsessively as uploads multiply. Scaling isn’t a choice — it’s an imperative for survival.
Horizontally Scalable Upload & Streaming
And as creators upload more, your encoding service, storage , and microservices have to scale accordingly. Horizontal scaling makes sure the platform is lightning fast, even with thousands being uploaded daily.
Smart Caching and Optimised Streaming
Edge caching reduces latency. Support HLS (adaptive bitrate streaming) and fast forward/rewind ability.
AI-Driven Recommendations at Scale
The recommendations keep getting smarter as your dataset grows. Machine learning models improve:
- track suggestions
- playlist automation
- creator discovery
- personalised feeds
This drives retention and increases daily active usage.
How Bestech (UK) Can Assist You in Making a Music App Like SoundCloud
Bestech is a leader in creating high-quality UGC platforms that are powerful and dynamic for all to use with their own scalable audio solutions, creator tools, and generator features. As a leading music streaming app development company, we are here to help you. For customers who wish to create a clone script or standout music app similar to SoundCloud, Bestechs offers:
UK-Focused Product Strategy and UX Design
Based on UK user behavior, we model creator journeys, listener flows , and moderation systems.
Our dev teams make the entire stack:
- upload pipelines
- audio encoding
- waveform engines
- social feeds
- messaging
- moderation systems
- analytics dashboards
Hybrid UK + Offshore Delivery for Value for Money
You receive UK-style strategic guidance and offshore engineering efficiency, bringing you class products at a budgeted price.
Long-term Support, Scale, and Managing the Infrastructure
Bestech ensures that the platform grows with you, technically, operationally, and commercially.
Conclusion
To create a music app similar to SoundCloud, companies will need to integrate audio technology and social interactions with creator enablement and solid UGC moderation in one offering. Success is built by creating a platform that respects creators, serves listeners, honors rights holders, and scales successfully as your user base expands. If executed with the right strategy as well as attention to detail, your app can break through into the UK and global music ecosystem.
FAQs
How much does it cost to develop an app like SoundCloud?
Prices vary between £40,000 and £350,000+, depending on features, scale, and complexity of the backend.
Do I need to obtain licences for music in a SoundCloud-like app?
Yes. This affects UGC platforms as well, regardless of whether the music contains copyrighted content.
Is it possible to upload music from my phone as a creator?
Yes. You have to be able to upload from mobile if you’re a creator on a first platform.
How do I manage UGC moderation?
Through a combination of automated detection and removal, human review, reporting mechanisms, and appropriate policies.
How much time does it take to create an app like SoundCloud?
10 to 50 weeks, depending on the level of complexity.
