Twitch music chief and digital music veteran Cindy Charles died Monday from injuries sustained in a traffic accident in the Netherlands, her husband Ricky Fishman confirmed. She was 69.

Among many other achievements, Charles played a key role in the development of Twitch's DJ category, making it the first DJ platform for legal livestreaming (and including licensing deals with all three major labels as well as many of the indie labels represented by Merlin) and earlier this one Month led the team behind Charli XCX's album preview livestream at Storm King in Upstate New York. She was in the Netherlands for a talk at the Amsterdam Dance Event.

Daniel Clancy, CEO of Twitch, wrote on social media: “Everyone who uses music on Twitch owes a debt of gratitude to Cindy's work. “She always had a bright smile on her face, even as she negotiated unprecedented music licensing deals.”

Her friend and colleague Kira Karlstrom wrote in a Medium post, “Cindy was more than just Twitch's Head of Music – she was the heart and soul of our team and a force for good in everything she touched.”

Charles joined Twitch, Amazon's interactive livestream service, in 2018 as Head of Partnerships and Operations and was promoted to Head of Music in April 2022, where she took a leadership role in music licensing across labels and publishers, music programming and artist relationships . She previously led business development for Amazon Tickets and Amazon's Video Shorts initiative. Earlier in her career, she served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel at MediaNet (formerly MusicNet) from 2002 to 2010 and as Vice President of Legal and Business Affairs at Viacom from 1995 to 2002, where she led the digital legal and business affairs of multiple divisions within MTV Networks , including the MTVi Group, which operated SonicNet, and the interactive divisions of MTV, VH1 and CMT. She also ran her own digital media consulting firm for many years.

A native of Queens, New York, Charles attended the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she majored in political science, but chose to follow her father's experiences as an entertainment law attorney. She received her law degree from Pace University's Elisabeth Haub School of Law.

She served as an advisor to the Board of Governors of the Recording Academy, co-founded the San Francisco chapter of the nonprofit organization She Is the Music, co-founded Women in Digital Media, and sat on the advisory board of Qwire. Hi5 and women in music.

Charles is survived by Fishman, her son Ben Charles and her stepson Sam Fishman.