Amazon-owned Twitch has operated under the DMCA for years without reaction, but since the pandemic brought the music industry’s attention to Twitch for live gigs, spurring huge growth for the platform. -form, music business organizations like the NMPA and RIAA have accused Twitch of taking advantage of the DMCA to avoid paying for music – in the same way that the organizations pressured TikTok, Facebook and YouTube to sign. licensing agreements in the past. So the two organizations have inundated Twitch with tens of thousands of takedowns over the past year, forcing Twitch to the bargaining table by frustrating its users.

In response, Twitch vp / head of music Tracy chan reiterated that Twitch does not tolerate copyright infringement, arguing that Twitch’s monetization system offers artists a more valuable business model than license payments could. Last September, to help streamers navigate the situation, the company launched Soundtrack by Twitch, a platform service that allows users to legally embed over a million copyrighted recordings into their videos. labels like Monstercat and Anjunabeats.

Music licensing platforms typically deal with the recording side first and then the more complex editing side, but it’s unclear where the negotiations between Twitch and the record companies stand. Behind the scenes, executives complained about Twitch’s frequent promises that a deal would be done soon. “It’s been next month for almost years now,” a source from the record label said.

More often than not, music licensing platforms need time to put in place reporting mechanisms to identify song usage and determine who to pay for. When NMPA and YouTube reached a music license agreement in 2011, settling the NMPA copyright infringement lawsuit against the video platform, YouTube acquired licensing and royalty service provider RightsFlow to obtain help. In a more recent example, even after Facebook Gaming struck music licensing deals with major label groups last September, the platform spent a year tweaking its content recognition system before granting only to its best users the ability to integrate popular music into their streams earlier. this month.

This is why lump sum payments are often offered and accepted. From there, it’s up to the publisher to decide how to allocate the royalties to their artists and songwriters, which is sometimes done by market share. These regulations may also have future licenses, which are also based on a lump sum and distributed accordingly.

Meanwhile, NMPA is still waging a separate music licensing battle with the Roblox gaming platform. In June, NMPA filed a $ 200 million copyright infringement lawsuit against Roblox, alleging that the gaming platform hosts a “massive” library of thousands of unlicensed songs that users can stream to. Games. Roblox has denied any wrongdoing, vowing to defend itself “vigorously” against the allegations.