BUILDING AN ONLINE MUSIC STREAMING PLATFORM

Abstract

The rapid growth of mobile internet and on-demand audio consumption has increased the demand for music streaming platforms that are reliable, scalable, and socially interactive. This thesis presents the design and implementation of Mnect, an online music streaming platform that provides a modern listening experience while extending it with real-time interaction features. Mnect is developed with a layered, domain-driven architecture to improve maintainability and future extensibility. The client application is built using Flutter and the BLoC/Cubit pattern, supporting key functions such as authentication, music discovery and search, playlist management, and a global audio player with synchronized queue handling. The backend is implemented using Firebase services—Authentication, Cloud Firestore, and Cloud Storage—to manage users, metadata, media assets, and real-time updates. A central contribution of the project is the channel feature, which enables a host to broadcast a listening session and allows listeners to join and synchronize playback in real time. The thesis also discusses Firestore data modeling decisions, denormalization tradeoffs, and stream-counting logic based on practical listening thresholds. Testing across multiple devices and usage scenarios indicates stable playback, consistent UI/UX, and reliable real-time synchronization, providing a solid foundation for future enhancements such as recommendations, offline support, and analytics.