Twitch strikes deal with the US music industry, but not yet to the benefit of its streamers

The National Music Publishers' Association this week announced that it had come to an agreement with Twitch "to work together to build productive partnerships between the service and music publishers". At the same time, Twitch emailed its streamers to confirm the terms of that deal and to highlight the apparent benefits the deal will bring.

For background, this agreement comes after years of struggle between Twitch and the music industry. Twitch streamers have been receiving DMCA strikes from music publishers for unlicensed use of copyright music while streaming, resulting in some of them receiving associated account bans by Twitch. Further, the music industry has been putting increasing pressure on Twitch (and its owner, Amazon) for "continuing to make available unlicensed recordings and compositions on its platform”.

In essence, the deal provides for a new process by which Twitch will be able to prevent and notify streamers of any copyright infringements caused by them on its platform. The Twitch team will review reports of music copyright infringement and will remove any infringing VODs or saved clips from the streamer's channel, and if the infringement is "flagrant" and the creator has a history of music misuse then Twitch may issue a warning or penalty to the streamer. It is as yet unclear which infringements will be classified by Twitch as "flagrant" (thought Twitch does say they will be specified), but it appears likely that they will at least include intentionally broadcasting copyright-protected music in the background of a stream. Interestingly, the NMPA announcement states that the process is also meant "to address when creators inadvertently or incidentally use music in their streams", which appears a lower threshold than Twitch's description of flagrant and repeated use. It is possible that by "address" the NMPA means that Twitch will issue a light touch warning to the streamer and delete his or her VOD where there is inadvertent or incidental use of music, without resorting to a formal DMCA notice that could lead to an account ban as has been the position in the past, but that is not entirely clear.

What is clear is that this agreement is for the benefit and protection of Twitch, not its streamers, because really nothing has changed for them. Twitch still has not obtained a music licence deal which might allow its content creators to play music during their streams (unlike Facebook Gaming). Inadvertently doing so might now be less likely to lead to an unfair DMCA strike or ban, but intentionally broadcasting copyright-protected music while streaming comes with the same risks as before.

In a statement to The Post, the NMPA president and CEO, David Israelite, stated that the deal "pave[s] the way for Twitch to license music if it decides it wants to provide that benefit to its streamers”, which offers a glimmer of hope for Twitch streamers in the future. However, for now, they would be well-advised to avoid playing copyright-protected music while live. 

I wrote about this topic over a year ago (here) and the guidance included for Twitch streamers who do want to play music in the background of their streams remains unchanged.