Media and community Case study
Yiddish24: news and music streaming apps
Android and iOS apps and a responsive site for live and on-demand news, interviews and music, with ads and emergency pop-ups, developed over five years.
Overview
Yiddish24 is a media platform delivering audio: live news reports, interviews, politics and a 24/6 music stream, through Android and iOS apps and a responsive website. We built and kept improving all three from 2016 to 2022.
The challenge
Live streaming, a persistent player with queues, advertising and urgent alerts had to feel the same across two mobile platforms and the web, and survive random crashes, memory limits and new devices.
What we built
- Android app (migrated from Eclipse to Android Studio) with ExoPlayer live streaming, deep linking and pagination
- iOS app fixes and UI updates, including new device layouts, with feature parity against Android
- A shared audio player: live stream, queue management, next and previous, pre-roll ads
- Web services for categories, advertisements and emergency pop-up data, and a client admin panel with an ads section
- An emergency pop-up for critical alerts that links to specific content
- Push notifications for text and audio alerts, with large images and deep links
- A website redesign with responsive HTML/CSS, dynamic category pages and news bulletins
- Performance work on launch time, memory and database handling, plus broad device testing
- Live audio streaming from a Shoutcast-compatible stream hosted on the client side, with news, interviews, politics and music sections including a 24/6 music stream
- Content sections: news (live reports, breaking news, interviews, weather and traffic alerts, business news), politics (analysis, roundtable discussions, real-time coverage) and music (a 24/6 music stream, new songs, album previews, artist interviews)
- Audio streamed live from a SamBroadcast/Shoutcast stream hosted on the client's server
How a system like this fits together
- Client side
- Services
- Third parties
In words: The Android and iOS apps, which share one audio player (ExoPlayer on Android), get categories, advertisements and emergency pop-up data from REST web services that a client admin panel also manages. Live audio plays from a Shoutcast-compatible stream hosted on the client side, and push notifications deliver text and audio alerts to the apps.
Technology used
| Layer | Choice | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile | Android, iOS | apps with a shared audio player |
| Audio | ExoPlayer | live streaming on Android |
| Streaming | Shoutcast | live audio stream, hosted on the client side |
| API | REST web services | categories, advertisements and emergency pop-up data |
| Alerts | Push notifications | text and audio alerts |
| Web | jQuery, HTML/CSS | the redesigned website |
What happened next
- Delivered
The work described above was delivered to the client.
- Operational facts
- Our work on this project spanned 2016–2022.
- It was maintained and extended over 6 years.
Screens
Could this be your project?
- You are planning an iOS or Android app, or have one that needs a stronger back end behind it. Mobile app development
- You need a web application with user accounts, admin tools and reporting. Website and web app development
- You work in media and community and want a team that has built for it before. Media and community work
Questions about this project
How long did this project take?
Our work on it ran from 2016 to 2022, with 3,000+ engineering hours logged in total.
What technology was used?
iOS, Android, ExoPlayer, Push notifications, REST web services, Shoutcast streaming, HTML/CSS, jQuery.
Was it maintained and extended over time?
Yes. Our work on this project was maintained and extended over 6 years, from 2016 to 2022.
Similar work
Also iOS and Android, same industry
Native iOS and Android apps with a web admin panel for community management: members, events, documents, chat, vendor offers and an ad module.
Also iOS and Android, same industry
Studium Smart: library audio and events app
A library app with audio chapters, event details, loan tracking, donations and library-card scanning, built with Firebase and Facebook and PayPal integrations.
Also iOS and Android, also a mobile app
Silent Beacon: personal safety apps and web portal
Android and iOS apps, a backend and a web portal for the Silent Beacon Bluetooth safety beacon: alerts, live location, subscriptions and business accounts, maintained over eight years.