“At first, almost everyone I know was celebrating this until they started going in depth with the terms and conditions,” said Twitch streamer and musician Ceddy Ang. “They found that playing music through Soundtrack does not exempt us from being [subject to copyright enforcement] and that’s when most of my friends went ‘meh’ about it.”
The World of Digital Copyright
In other words, the company failed to acquire synchronization rights to music in its Soundtrack catalog, leading to VODs (video-on-demand clips) archived after a livestream to be stripped of any music streamed via Soundtrack for legal purposes. Soundtrack works seamlessly for live-streamed content, but has more than a few hiccups when it comes to archived and shareable content. Streamers and online video makers have been dealing with the asymmetrical enforcement of esoteric copyright law on a daily basis. Competitors like Pretzel Rocks, marketed as a stream-safe music platform for live-streamers, have called out the media giant’s new feature as a failure to address the site’s much-talked about music problem. In a lengthy Medium post, Pretzel Rocks CEO Nate Beck outlines how the company is using the new feature via a series of licensing loopholes, effectively saving the company money while leaving streamers and musicians on the cutting room floor to pick up the pieces.
A Changing Industry Standard
While there are kinks to be worked out, streamers like Ang still suggest the integration of Soundtrack is a net positive for the growing platform that has cemented itself as the face of online live-streaming. “It’ll be a delight to see my music being played by other streamers and hopefully people get to know more of my work,” said And. “As a streamer, I can also help my fellow artist friends by playing their music if it’s listed on Soundtrack, too. If it means I don’t have to subscribe to other services just to play royalty free music, why not?” During lockdown, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic’s national fallout, analytics firm StreamElements found that the live-streaming giant singularly grew by 50 percent over the course of a month, and more than doubled its average year-over-year watch time. As people turned to social media seeking a quarantine pastime, Twitch further monopolized the live-streaming sector. Earlier this year, streamers were inundated by a flurry of DMCA claims from clips dating all the way back to 2017. These copyright claims can often translate into strikes against a creator. Per Twitch’s Terms and Conditions, it’s three strikes and you’re out; a creator who receives three strikes on their account is permanently banned from the platform, threatening their livelihood and creative outlet. “Many times, I caught my YouTube videos and streams being muted or given copyright strikes. I think the existing copyright regulations are garbage for the modern era when most of the time we just play music for the sake of our own enjoyment and hyping the audience,” Ang said. The move to swiftly create an in-house feature for creators to mitigate risks with streaming music, which has become a big part of the platform, made sense. From a business perspective, these creators bring in paying subscribers and advertising-susceptible viewers to the platform. Having creators’ channels constantly threatened by overambitious copyright claimants only hurts Twitch as a platform. In the end, while Soundtrack is far from perfect, creators like Ang think it’s their best bet.
