Twitch to Remove Copyrighted Music from Clips

Good news for musicians who do not want their tracks used without permission: Twitch [a streaming site] has just announced that it will begin to scan users’ clips for copyrighted music. Streamers will not be penalized if copyrighted music is found in their videos; however, the particular clips that contain the music will be deleted.

Much of this comes in the wake of compensation issues that songwriters were facing; musicians were not always adequately compensated in terms of streaming royalties. As a full-time musician myself, such a problem hit close to home. Musician’s incomes are based around the music that we create; our music is our product. Just because our product is not a physical one does not mean that it is any less valuable than shop-owners’ merchandise is. When streamers were able to use music in a way that did not require proper compensation to go to the original creator, musicians were cheated. Such issues were similar to what shop-owners might have faced if customers entered and used merchandise without permission [and maybe even took it and resold it for their own profit, such as in monetized videos].

Music is our work and our art. Streamer accountability [like Twitch is now implementing] may be a step in the right direction for justice, and for financial fairness, for musicians everywhere.

Photo:

Alex Castro – The Verge