Blog post

Music playing opportunities for Twitch – how to avoid DMCA strikes and fit Twitch music guidelines

Freecords just recently launched “Freecords for Twitch” to fill in a longstanding loophole regarding music played on Twitch during livestreams. More info about this new function can be accessed here. Sign up with a discounted price for promotional period here.

 

The Backstory

 During the past few months Twitch came under crossfire, because of the music streamers use while broadcasting Twitch streamers have to be really cautious what kind of music they use, and this constant fear gives them a headache. Lately the people who used copyrighted music got DMCA strikes. According to these notifications, after the third strike the Twitch account gets suspended. This can be a huge loss for people who make a living on Twitch, or even for the ones who are just trying to provide entertainment for a small group of audience.

Another really important option for most of the streamers on Twitch is the ability to monetize their streams. Even when they are not getting DMCA strikes, but still they are playing copyrighted music on twitch, streamers are getting deprived from the option of monetization, causing them huge losses of money. Some streamers think, if they are not getting the notification about copyright violation immediately, they are safe, but DMCA strikes can be retrospective. Many twitch users got their old broadcasts demonetized.

 

What you cannot do:

 

First of all, let’s clear the basic misconceptions.

The music of artists who are signed with record labels cannot be played, since the DMCA strike will hit automatically. Even if you contact the artist and they give “permission” to use their music is not valid, because the master recording (the song that you are playing) is owned by their record label, so they cannot give you any rights for the usage of this song.

Non DMCA music playlists started to appear on streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Amazon Music, and many more. It might be even correct that the songs in these playlists are not violating the copyrights, but personal streaming platforms mentioned above CANNOT BE USED FOR BROADCASTING BY LAW. They are only intended to use for personal purposes, listening in the car, during a workout, etc. Otherwise it is a huge legal violation. Long story short, do not even bother how to connect Spotify to Twitch, because you are violating law playing music from Spotify, while streaming on Twitch. When you think DMCA strikes are serious, this is even a bigger violation.

 

Solution:

 

Non DMCA music can be used during Twitch streams, but as it was mentioned above, not in all cases.

Freecords just recently launched its ‘Freecords for Twitch’ service. You can get it at a promotional price here. Unlike personal music streaming platforms, Freecords have the right to let users stream music for other purposes than just personal use. Being able to stream the music during a Twitch broadcast is a really handy feature, since the broadcaster does not have to download and add music manually to Streamlabs OBS, or any other streaming software. Freecords can be connected quickly to Streamlabs, and the user does not have to worry about downloading songs anymore. Also, they get the freedom to change between playlists, collections of music, and single songs very quickly, which takes the Twitch streaming experience and quality to a next level.

In addition to this, Freecords only have ‘non DMCA music” on the platform. Users of Freecords for Twitch can monetize their Twitch streams without worrying about DMCA strikes.

 

On top of that Freecords will introduce customized playlist curation, especially for Twitch streamers. After analyzing the audience and offering consultations, Freecords will create playlists for streamers to match the music to the characteristics of the channel. This function will help to boost Twitch channels.

 

Since Freecords offers new and emerging artists, discovering music with the audience while streaming on Twitch will have a great social effect and help to bring the community together.

 

 There are other platforms which offer “non DMCA music”. Epidemic sound, and artlist are the two most popular. They have a limited set of songs, and all the music has to be downloaded song by song. Integration to Streamlabs is also quite easy, but only the downloaded and manually added songs can be played during Twitch streams. Music streaming from these platforms are not available.

Monstercat is a platform which provides music streaming for Twitch similarly to Freecords. Though, Monstercat has limitations compared to Freecords, such as there is only electronic music on their platform and they do not offer custom playlists nor a social discovering experience.

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