Twitch Brings Music to Broadcasters

Update: On today’s (16-JAN-2015) Twitch Weekly at 1pm PST, our Chief Strategy Officer, Colin Carrier, will talk about Music and we’ll have a live Q&A.

Today we’re announcing two important music initiatives: the Twitch Music Library and the beta Music category.

Twitch Music Library

The Twitch Music Library (hosted at music.twitch.tv), is a library of songs pre-cleared for Twitch broadcasters to use live and with VODs (past broadcasts/highlights). As you may recall, we implemented an audio recognition system last year out of respect for copyright holders and to protect both our broadcasters and our brand. We knew it was equally important to ensure broadcasters had music options. Thus, the Twitch Music Library was born to offer safe passage through the less-than-clear legal landscape when it comes to audio rights.

The Twitch Music Library features more than 500 songs provided by established and burgeoning labels, including Mad Decent, Dim Mak, Spinnin’ Records, OWSLA, Monstercat, Fool’s Gold, and many more.

Music Category Beta

We are also announcing an experiment with music content creators: our beta Music category. The Music category — listed among the game titles you can designate for a broadcast — is for musicians to use for creating, performing, and presenting original music.

Artists such as Deadmau5, Steve Aoki, Porter Robinson, Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit, and many others have already turned to Twitch to launch channels to play games. With the beta Music category, they are now able to make music a part of their Twitch presence.

You will continue to see performances (e.g., concerts, music festivals) by professional artists. We will also showcase “radio shows” created by approved labels.

To this end, we’ve kicked this off by working with Monstercat’s new 24-hour Twitch music channel called Monstercat FM. Monstercat has been experimenting with Twitch broadcasters to use the Monstercat channel as a new radio-style music player during their broadcasts.

We encourage all music creators to share your content live on Twitch and to engage with your Twitch viewing audiences during broadcasts just like gamers do via chat participation.

Before We End This Epic Blog…

We’ve put together an FAQ to capture what we think some of your questions might be, and we will add to it over time. This includes certain approved use cases for the Music category, as well as some examples of what’s not allowed.

We understand that this is new and may be a bit confusing given Twitch’s long-standing “gaming-only” stance. We view music as an expansion, but gaming will always be our core focus. You’ll see the same front page and directories, and you can still interact in all the same ways with your favorite broadcasters and your fellow viewers. We hope you discover some really great music creators and have the chance to check out some of your favorite musicians, while also having access to a free-to-use library of music for your broadcasts.

For music broadcasters, please be sure that what you are broadcasting is either performance or creation of your original music. Put simply, if you have the rights to stream the music in your Twitch broadcast, you are encouraged to do so. For music labels, publishers, and musicians (including DJs) with proper licenses, please contact us to discuss rights management.

The broadcasting of music remains subject to our Terms of Service and the Rules of Conduct, which have been updated to accommodate this initiative. Broadcasting of music is also subject to DMCA guidelines. VODs will continue to be subject to our audio recognition system.

We expect a few bumps along the way as this is a fairly large and new undertaking. We appreciate your continued support and welcome your use of all things Music. As always, we value your feedback. Please let us know what you think, and give us all the ideas you have at feedback@twitch.tv.