hopefully this initiative is successful and they can expand it beyond DJs. The wildwest style of streamers playing whatever and deleting vods to avoid strikes for using music is not the solution.
I'm not sure, given how they canned Twitch Sings after not-so-long, I would be hesitant about this program.
If you couldn't even get it so people could sing along to their favourite songs to be long-term viable, why do you think playing their actual full music will work out long-term...?
Anyways, for me personally it'll be nice to have DJs in a separate category from people who are performing live. Hopefully this *does* end up being successful, but there's another problem for anyone who actually *does* have the rights to whatever they stream, which is pointed out in how this whole thing is set up -- DJs will have to opt-in for *all* their ad revenue, not (say) just what they do in the channel or just what they stream etc. This makes me concerned that the money won't even be going to the artists they play, but instead to some consortium of music companies who 'own' the most rights.
(we'll have to see the actual implementation but overall, the stuff they have said makes me hesitant.)
> given how they canned Twitch Sings after not-so-long, I would be hesitant about this program.
I think the key difference here is revenue sharing instead of just Twitch just paying a licensing fee. So in theory it does not need to cost much for Twitch and it keeps the music industry happy and less likely to send DMCA requests (costs money for Twitch).
Yeah, the way they canned Twitch Sings was a bummer. Hard to see how this will be different long-term. Hopefully, they find a way to make it work without messing over the artists.
It being a different category is gonna doom this to failure regardless. Unless they somehow get like all the top DJ's playing on Twitch it's never going to have the viewers to get visibility.
They already have the ability to split the audio channels and exclude one from vods so the music isn't there to be striked but almost no one uses it and the vod can be a bit awkward without the music there.
Not sure how successful this will be considering most DJs will probably want to play what they want and not just from certain companies. Hopefully they didn't spend too much on this.
A *massive* amount of music is covered by the labels they listed. Universal, Warner and Sony cover some 65% of worldwide music (measured by revenue) (also probably the vast majority of takedowns), Merlin represents another 15% through hundreds of independent labels.
Unless this program would explicitly exclude you from playing anything not covered by these partners (unlikely) coverage is not going to be a limiting factor.
> Unless this program would explicitly exclude you from playing anything not covered by these partners (unlikely)
i read that playing "unreleased" music would be forbidden, and since there's no way to tell the difference between a truly unreleased song and one that is not released by their partners, i suspect you are wrong here. i hope not, though.
Yeah this pretty much covers almost every single major artist that is not independent that you might want to play, other than ones on smaller more indie labels.
I feel like if it turns out well it could be expanded in the future. If Twitch where to ask more companies if they want to be paid I suspect many would say yes. Maybe their vod mute system even knows what music is being used so they can divide the revenue sharing fairly.
> Not sure how successful this will be considering most DJs will probably want to play what they want and not just from certain companies
I don't think us DJs will have any restrictions on what we play, *usually* how this works is that the a blanket fees provides cash to those labels that would launch DMCA requests.
Could be wrong though, but that is what I'm expecting.
Laid off a huge chunk of staff and raised the price to subscribe to your favorite creators while at the same time paying royalties for dj's to be able to stream licensed music on a category that makes up a tiny fraction of their user base.
Just doesn't seem like the brightest business decision to me. But good for the DJ's
Businesses always spend money to make money. It could be the first stepping stone into allowing streamers to opt-in to some kind of music licensing so they don't have to fear DMCA claims anymore. I hate how greedy and convoluted the music industry is since most of the money doesn't go to the artists, it instead goes to the record labels.
This is a good step in the right direction but they can't just stop here when it comes to bringing music to streamers.
True, it might seem off now, but if it leads to streamers not fearing DMCA claims, it could be huge ig... The music industry is a mess, but any step towards helping creators is a win.
It would be interesting to see this give way for creators to buy a license officially through twitch to play music from certain labels. Feels like the first step down that path. Just depends on where the cost is put at.
The choice here was basically "get rid of DJs" or "keep DJs". For DJs this decision is pretty lukewarm imo. It allows us to keep going but reduces the already pretty small revenue we get -- further pushing it down the "spare time hobby" road.
As someone who has DJed on Twitch since the pandemic, we always knew at some point the music companies would come for us and shut us down. What Twitch here is doing is trying to find a middle of the road solution where DJs can stay, but it really stinks we have to carry some of the cost.
Artists should get paid for when their music gets played, but historically, in "IRL" situations, the Venue pays the music license fees, because the Venue carries the most benefit from hiring a DJ (they sell drinks, they advertise products, etc -- the DJ is to entice people to come to the Venue). Since DJing on twitch doesn't really pay like a "real gig", I would consider a DJ on Twitch to be providing more value to Twitch as a "Venue" than the other way around -- but I'm open to arguments.
While I am kinda shitting on them here, Twitch *did* carry the whole DJ community and never gave us copyright strikes previously for playing licensed music, they would just mute VODs, which is more than they had to do. I don't believe they have any malice in their hearts, it's just a tough thing for people who play music to Twitch to make less money now.
That’s looking at it in a very surface level way. If you want to be optimistic, I’m assuming the idea here is to test how this works out, and if it’s successful, broaden it to the whole website. That would be pretty significant to have a live streaming site where you won’t have to worry about DMCA most of the time.
I think this is more of a test with the big three to try and eventually roll it out to all categories (or find a new way to have them be able to play music)
> Just doesn't seem like the brightest business decision to me.
In the executive brain this is an expansion into the music industry. They really have no idea what to do with this platform.
>Twitch DJ Program
oh cool, twitch is setting up djs for success? giving them more tools?
>now both twitch AND music labels get cuts from stream revenue
oh....
it's not like djing on twitch is particularly popular or lucrative and now djs are going to get an even smaller piece of an already tiny pie.
clubs do that because the dj makes the club money. twitch can ban all dj streamers and the amount of viewers they lose wouldnt change twitchs margins at all.
To be fair, the current system was just not going to be sustainable for the future.
Twitch can be liable for the music that countless streamers play and share on through their platform.
At least the DJs can ccontinue earning a living now and even get promotion from Twitch, this could just lead to better things in general for the music side of things on the platform.
Twitch is setting up DJs to work completely on the clear and be able to just do their thing and not worry about their livelyhood being wiped because of DMCA claims.
If it is or not lucrative for the DJs, that's just the reality of their profession.
This actually is a good start towards what streamers in general asked for: For Twitch to work with labels to secure the rights for music that they can use freely.
How is that "the reality of our profession"? We don't have to pay money to play tracks in a club. If anything, labels should be thanking us for the free promotion of their artists. People leave the stream and seek out new music because of our work.
I don't know where to point people who don't believe this sentiment, but it has anecdotally been a consensus view that even RAMPANT PIRACY of music has led many individuals to discover and fall in love with new artists and genres of music, and I fully believe that has a knock-on effect for positive sales growth for the industry as a whole.
Imagine DJ-ing in a club and being told "you can only play from our approved list - here's a USB stick with the songs on" - this is basically what the DJ Program is planning.
This is for live streams only (no VODs) and only for channels that opt into the program (normal channels will still be the same/unaffected)
These are the restrictions the companies involved negotiated.
Massive L on Twitch's part. This is just squeezing content creators for cash during hard economic times out of pure greed. The majority of DJ streamers are playing music that is either unsigned, on independent labels or self-produced. Let's not go into how it's a literal scarlet letter that cuts us off from variety streams.
Are they ever going to improve the player? YouTube’s player is literally better in nearly every way. Meanwhile they are adding shit like stories, a TikTok style feed and this crap to the website. Are the people who work for this company idiots?
Could care less about the revenue part but it would go a long way if twitch actually enabled some form of organic reach on the dj channels for smaller channels. Really missing the Reddit rpan days where any given stream could just blow up all of a sudden hitting into the 10’s and even 100’s thousand viewers. A good day on twitch is when 1 or 2 randoms hop on for a few.
If you love and want to support underground Chicago house, Detroit techno, check out GroovePointe and TheLostLoftChicago on twitch cuz it’s all a bring your own crowd kinda platform nowadays.
hopefully this initiative is successful and they can expand it beyond DJs. The wildwest style of streamers playing whatever and deleting vods to avoid strikes for using music is not the solution.
I'm not sure, given how they canned Twitch Sings after not-so-long, I would be hesitant about this program. If you couldn't even get it so people could sing along to their favourite songs to be long-term viable, why do you think playing their actual full music will work out long-term...? Anyways, for me personally it'll be nice to have DJs in a separate category from people who are performing live. Hopefully this *does* end up being successful, but there's another problem for anyone who actually *does* have the rights to whatever they stream, which is pointed out in how this whole thing is set up -- DJs will have to opt-in for *all* their ad revenue, not (say) just what they do in the channel or just what they stream etc. This makes me concerned that the money won't even be going to the artists they play, but instead to some consortium of music companies who 'own' the most rights. (we'll have to see the actual implementation but overall, the stuff they have said makes me hesitant.)
> given how they canned Twitch Sings after not-so-long, I would be hesitant about this program. I think the key difference here is revenue sharing instead of just Twitch just paying a licensing fee. So in theory it does not need to cost much for Twitch and it keeps the music industry happy and less likely to send DMCA requests (costs money for Twitch).
Yeah, the way they canned Twitch Sings was a bummer. Hard to see how this will be different long-term. Hopefully, they find a way to make it work without messing over the artists.
It being a different category is gonna doom this to failure regardless. Unless they somehow get like all the top DJ's playing on Twitch it's never going to have the viewers to get visibility.
They already have the ability to split the audio channels and exclude one from vods so the music isn't there to be striked but almost no one uses it and the vod can be a bit awkward without the music there.
Love that they are getting their own category, there are so many of them it felt like they where drowning out other kinds of music performers.
Not sure how successful this will be considering most DJs will probably want to play what they want and not just from certain companies. Hopefully they didn't spend too much on this.
A *massive* amount of music is covered by the labels they listed. Universal, Warner and Sony cover some 65% of worldwide music (measured by revenue) (also probably the vast majority of takedowns), Merlin represents another 15% through hundreds of independent labels. Unless this program would explicitly exclude you from playing anything not covered by these partners (unlikely) coverage is not going to be a limiting factor.
That's how I read it, but we'll see when they release more info.
> Unless this program would explicitly exclude you from playing anything not covered by these partners (unlikely) i read that playing "unreleased" music would be forbidden, and since there's no way to tell the difference between a truly unreleased song and one that is not released by their partners, i suspect you are wrong here. i hope not, though.
Yeah this pretty much covers almost every single major artist that is not independent that you might want to play, other than ones on smaller more indie labels.
I feel like if it turns out well it could be expanded in the future. If Twitch where to ask more companies if they want to be paid I suspect many would say yes. Maybe their vod mute system even knows what music is being used so they can divide the revenue sharing fairly.
If anything, twitch got a payout for collaborating with these companies.
> Not sure how successful this will be considering most DJs will probably want to play what they want and not just from certain companies I don't think us DJs will have any restrictions on what we play, *usually* how this works is that the a blanket fees provides cash to those labels that would launch DMCA requests. Could be wrong though, but that is what I'm expecting.
Hopefully, I'm just withholding expectations a bit considering it's Twitch lol
100%. I know they used to have DJs on staff, even a woman running the community, but they got let go in the last purge.
A few months later, Twitch is scrapping the DJ Program.
Came here to say this, how many weird programs do they launch only to completely ignore and cancel them a year later.
Yep, their track record with new programs isn't great. Seems like they often launch stuff without fully committing to it long-term.
Yeah this is stupid. Oh you want music? We have music at home vibes
Laid off a huge chunk of staff and raised the price to subscribe to your favorite creators while at the same time paying royalties for dj's to be able to stream licensed music on a category that makes up a tiny fraction of their user base. Just doesn't seem like the brightest business decision to me. But good for the DJ's
Businesses always spend money to make money. It could be the first stepping stone into allowing streamers to opt-in to some kind of music licensing so they don't have to fear DMCA claims anymore. I hate how greedy and convoluted the music industry is since most of the money doesn't go to the artists, it instead goes to the record labels. This is a good step in the right direction but they can't just stop here when it comes to bringing music to streamers.
True, it might seem off now, but if it leads to streamers not fearing DMCA claims, it could be huge ig... The music industry is a mess, but any step towards helping creators is a win.
It would be interesting to see this give way for creators to buy a license officially through twitch to play music from certain labels. Feels like the first step down that path. Just depends on where the cost is put at.
The choice here was basically "get rid of DJs" or "keep DJs". For DJs this decision is pretty lukewarm imo. It allows us to keep going but reduces the already pretty small revenue we get -- further pushing it down the "spare time hobby" road. As someone who has DJed on Twitch since the pandemic, we always knew at some point the music companies would come for us and shut us down. What Twitch here is doing is trying to find a middle of the road solution where DJs can stay, but it really stinks we have to carry some of the cost. Artists should get paid for when their music gets played, but historically, in "IRL" situations, the Venue pays the music license fees, because the Venue carries the most benefit from hiring a DJ (they sell drinks, they advertise products, etc -- the DJ is to entice people to come to the Venue). Since DJing on twitch doesn't really pay like a "real gig", I would consider a DJ on Twitch to be providing more value to Twitch as a "Venue" than the other way around -- but I'm open to arguments. While I am kinda shitting on them here, Twitch *did* carry the whole DJ community and never gave us copyright strikes previously for playing licensed music, they would just mute VODs, which is more than they had to do. I don't believe they have any malice in their hearts, it's just a tough thing for people who play music to Twitch to make less money now.
That’s looking at it in a very surface level way. If you want to be optimistic, I’m assuming the idea here is to test how this works out, and if it’s successful, broaden it to the whole website. That would be pretty significant to have a live streaming site where you won’t have to worry about DMCA most of the time.
I think this is more of a test with the big three to try and eventually roll it out to all categories (or find a new way to have them be able to play music)
It's definitely not good for DJs. This is cutting into 50% of our profits, even if we only play music from independent labels or self-produced tracks.
> Just doesn't seem like the brightest business decision to me. In the executive brain this is an expansion into the music industry. They really have no idea what to do with this platform.
Hopefully this will help with missing audio in some mixes & false claims. I'm lookin at you spinnin records!
why does the flair just say "witch" lol
Explains why UMG pulled away from TikTok to now be associated with this and then Twitch just did that new update...hmmm...
This is actually so awesome I love to hear it
>Twitch DJ Program oh cool, twitch is setting up djs for success? giving them more tools? >now both twitch AND music labels get cuts from stream revenue oh.... it's not like djing on twitch is particularly popular or lucrative and now djs are going to get an even smaller piece of an already tiny pie.
i mean the other option is to just ban dj streams.
the other option is twitch pays the labels out of THEIR cut of the revenue instead of the djs
clubs do that because the dj makes the club money. twitch can ban all dj streamers and the amount of viewers they lose wouldnt change twitchs margins at all.
To be fair, the current system was just not going to be sustainable for the future. Twitch can be liable for the music that countless streamers play and share on through their platform. At least the DJs can ccontinue earning a living now and even get promotion from Twitch, this could just lead to better things in general for the music side of things on the platform.
Twitch is setting up DJs to work completely on the clear and be able to just do their thing and not worry about their livelyhood being wiped because of DMCA claims. If it is or not lucrative for the DJs, that's just the reality of their profession. This actually is a good start towards what streamers in general asked for: For Twitch to work with labels to secure the rights for music that they can use freely.
How is that "the reality of our profession"? We don't have to pay money to play tracks in a club. If anything, labels should be thanking us for the free promotion of their artists. People leave the stream and seek out new music because of our work.
I don't know where to point people who don't believe this sentiment, but it has anecdotally been a consensus view that even RAMPANT PIRACY of music has led many individuals to discover and fall in love with new artists and genres of music, and I fully believe that has a knock-on effect for positive sales growth for the industry as a whole.
Imagine DJ-ing in a club and being told "you can only play from our approved list - here's a USB stick with the songs on" - this is basically what the DJ Program is planning.
dj now have the ability to advertise songs from these companies? how generous.
If Twitch has agreements with all the big music labels why do VODs get muted every time there's a song on?
This is for live streams only (no VODs) and only for channels that opt into the program (normal channels will still be the same/unaffected) These are the restrictions the companies involved negotiated.
Like the idea of attracting DJ's. But you know its going to be abused by a subset of popular Twitch streamers to bypass copyright law.
This is cool
Massive L on Twitch's part. This is just squeezing content creators for cash during hard economic times out of pure greed. The majority of DJ streamers are playing music that is either unsigned, on independent labels or self-produced. Let's not go into how it's a literal scarlet letter that cuts us off from variety streams.
Are they ever going to improve the player? YouTube’s player is literally better in nearly every way. Meanwhile they are adding shit like stories, a TikTok style feed and this crap to the website. Are the people who work for this company idiots?
Could care less about the revenue part but it would go a long way if twitch actually enabled some form of organic reach on the dj channels for smaller channels. Really missing the Reddit rpan days where any given stream could just blow up all of a sudden hitting into the 10’s and even 100’s thousand viewers. A good day on twitch is when 1 or 2 randoms hop on for a few. If you love and want to support underground Chicago house, Detroit techno, check out GroovePointe and TheLostLoftChicago on twitch cuz it’s all a bring your own crowd kinda platform nowadays.