Music streaming services have affected the music industry from both a financial and legal standpoint. Their current business model affects stakeholders such as artists, users, and investors. These services have been scrutinized recently for their imperfect royalty distribution model. Covid-19 has made these discussions even more relevant as touring income has come to a halt for musicians and the live entertainment industry. <br/>Under the current per-stream model, it is becoming exceedingly hard for artists to make a living off of streams. This forces artists to tour heavily as well as cut corners to create what is essentially “disposable art”. Rapidly releasing multiple projects a year has become the norm for many modern artists. This paper will examine the licensing framework, royalty payout issues, and propose a solution.

Anthemy is a web app that I created so that Spotify users could connect with other uses and see their listening statistics. The app has a chat feature that matches concurrent users based on a variety of search criteria, as well as a statistics page that contains a breakdown of a user's top artists, songs, albums, and genres as well as a detailed breakdown of each of their liked playlists.