Internet Radio Mobile App Developed using Xamarin, Azure & C# [CASE STUDY]

Music industry has more user fan base listening through mobile & tablet devices compared to conventional broadcasting methods like radio & television. Digital media streaming services are one of the pioneer technology helping many artists to reach millions of users. Radio streaming app was built using Microsoft Xamarin, C# and Microsoft Azure IaaS.

The impact of digital streaming media on society is cross-cutting and encompassing, and is regarded as a unique growth sector. With online media developing at a rapid pace, it is important to focus on real-time streaming radio as a source of connecting & informing users about daily events & programs. The success of a radio program is determined based on the user preferences. Our client offered live streaming services and wanted to develop an intuitive radio streaming mobile app to its user base of various ethnicity.

The objective of the solution is music delivery of popular artists in all media domains, providing online services to all followers, which would lead to expand the fan base. The design of the application needed to be minimalistic and must integrate the various streaming features in a simple, easy to use, visually appealing solution.

• Handling multiple speed of streaming medium
• Broadcasting errors/buffering of media
• Variable latency of streaming medium
• User personalization

To initiate radio streaming app development, the major task was focused on solution architecture and designing mobile application user interface. For generating new ideas of possible solution, the team at Rishabh Software worked on research design approach by generating various design options which would be feasible to the user.

The team started with the simplest solution using Xamarin, C# for listing the required features and generated a possible layout for the page which would outline the program a user is listening to as well as providing a simple play/pause interface, and space for popup advertisements. A tab based design was implemented to minimize the need for the application to open up new pages, plus the user is able to browse different categories no matter which tab they have currently selected. A search bar was also added in the main page of the application to help a user identify its preferred radio stream rather than browsing through genre categories. A design evaluation matrix was built by assigning a value from 1-5 for each individual design quality of the application for: intuitiveness, simplicity, appeal, and spatial arrangement. We also took the range of motion of the user’s thumb into consideration and designed large buttons to simplify application usability.

Next step was creating a cloud based infrastructure to support streaming of various radio genres and managing concurrent users in real-time. A custom media decoder and Content Delivery Network (CDN) mesh was developed using Microsoft Azure IaaS with Xamarin & C#, which improved app performance and delivered rich media services with social media integrations. The mobile application and the backend infrastructure developed supports streams like AAC, AAC+, HE-AAC+, SHOUTcast playlist and displayed stream name with current song & artist. Our team planned, designed, implemented media services using agile methodology and published seven mobile applications using Xamarin cross platform mobile development.

• Custom media decoder to match sample rate with the server
• Supports Shoutcast/Icecast
• Streaming services through AAC/MP3/CDN
• Better user experience with minimalistic navigation structure

Digital Enterprise

UAE based digital enterprise offering media & entertainment services.

• Microsoft Xamarin
• C#
• Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• Microsoft Azure Media Services
• Microsoft Azure IaaS
• Microsoft SQL
• Media Queries
• HTML5