What started as a high school challenge has turned into a published research achievement for three Connetquot High School seniors.

Alvi Alam, Zayr Habeeb and Alessandro Romero Lazarte recently had their research paper, “Oligopolistic Power in Music Streaming Platforms,” published as a preprint on the Social Science Research Network under the mentorship of Dr. Yehuda Klein of the Economics Department at Brooklyn College, CUNY.

The project began under the guidance of business teacher Mr. Ryan Olin as part of the New York Federal Reserve High School Challenge. Rather than stopping when the competition ended, the students chose to take their work further, continuing their research at a college-level and developing it into a full research paper.

Their paper examines competition within the music streaming industry, exploring how algorithms, playlist curation and platform ecosystems can give major streaming services greater market power and influence the opportunities available to artists.