Twitch has advised its streamers to turn off music-in-game should the title give the option too.
Recently, the streaming platform apologised to its streamers for the way it handled the copyright situation that it faced.
In a blog post, the company explained that it had received thousands of notifications from breaching the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). As such, to keep with the company’s DMCA guidelines, clips were deleted from channels.
However, Twitch failed to keep streamers informed. Therefore, individuals were unaware of which content breached copyright. Moreover, they were not told how to contact those that made the infringement claim, nor were they informed of what possible penalties they may face.
“We hear your feedback about how frustratingly little information we provided, and we should have made that warning email a lot more informative and helpful,” said Twitch.
Making changes
Due to the fiasco, Twitch is working to introduce new tools to enable streamers to manage their content better.
“Ever since the influx of DMCA notifications began, we have been working on building new (and improving existing) tools to help creators (such as the Clips mass deletion tool). This work is still happening,” said Twitch.
One such change will be to make it easier for a streamer to control what audio is recorded from a livestream.
“You’re rightly upset that the only option we provided was a mass deletion tool for Clips, and that we only gave you three-days notice to use this tool,” said Twitch.
“We could have developed more sophisticated, user-friendly tools awhile ago. That we didn’t is on us. And we could have provided creators with a longer time period to address their VOD and Clip libraries – that was a miss as well. We’re truly sorry for these mistakes, and we’ll do better.”
Turn it off
As seen on Twitter, Streamers have been asking the platform what they need to do following the mass copyright claims the company received.
“We recommend reading through any game’s EULA, and utilising any option to turn music off if the game includes that option, or mute the game audio,” said Twitch via its support channel.
It is not the news that pro streamers would want to receive, given the question asked due to the upcoming release of Cyberpunk 2077, which will feature a full track of music.
Going forward
For the time being, Twitch has advised streamers to avoid using music in their streams. However, the streaming platform is working towards a solution.
“We are actively speaking with the major record labels about potential approaches to additional licenses that would be appropriate for the Twitch service,” said Twitch.
“That said, the current constructs for licenses that the record labels have with other services (which typically take a cut of revenue from creators for payment to record labels) make less sense for Twitch.
“The vast majority of our creators don’t have recorded music as a part of their streams, and the revenue implications to creators of such a deal are substantial.”
