Reports indicate there is a new agreement between the streaming site, Twitch, and the music industry.
Twitch streamers and Twitch themselves have been boxing in the ring with the music industry for about a year now, and it seems like there’s some progress being made. The issue rose to prominence after there were thousands of reported takedown notices enforced under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This meant a lot of videos and clips from streamers were forcibly removed if they contained copyrighted music in them.
The Washington Post revealed information from an email sent to streamers which shed some details about the new deal between the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and the streaming platform.
This is a part of what the Twitch email stated, “As part of this agreement, we want to let you know about a new process that we are creating that participating music rights holders can opt into to report certain uses of their music, which is more flexible and forgiving to creators who inadvertently or incidentally use music in their streams than the existing process required under the DMCA and similar global laws.”
The general gist of the email is that streamers should still be cautious about playing music on their streams and Twitch is finally making some progress on finding a solution to the matter. The process of warning streamers about playing licensed music on their streams is about the only thing that has changed. So, this means videos won’t be immediately taken down, but more disciplinary actions will occur if the streamer persists in ignoring the warnings.
Multiple streamers and people following this issue are still worried that this means nothing and this new agreement with the NMPA only protects the streaming site, but not the streamers.
A lot of hope was riding on this new agreement helping streamers since Billboard released an article highlighting how the NMPA President and CEO, David Israelite, and Twitch Head of Music, Tracy Chan, gave positive statements about “building long-lasting partnerships”. However, it appears that the partnership is only for the two companies and not for the streamers who are grinding out content as best they can.
At the end of the day, it will be a tough battle to allow streamers to freely play licensed music on their channels, but only time will tell how this battle plays out.
