Twitch offers rights-cleared music to streamers with 30 indie deals

Livestreaming platform Twitch is about to offer 1 million globally rights-cleared tracks for its creators to use in their streams.

The new feature, Soundtrack by Twitch,, sources its content from 30 independent labels and distributors for the beta launch.

Australia’s Future Classic is one of the labels, which means its acts including Flume, Moju, Sophie and G-Flip could benefit.

At this stage it’s not clear if the deals cover entire rosters or just some acts, but it would certainly help artists get discovered.

“This launch from Twitch is a gamechanger for independent artists everywhere,” declared Steve Stoute of “a record label in your pocket” distributor UnitedMasters.

“Gaming and music drive today’s culture and Soundtrack is the next essential step to support this thriving community,” added Ghazi Shami of EMPIRE

Other labels include Anjunabeats, Chillhop, Monstercat, Nuclear Blast and Alpha Pupwhich.

Their acts include XXXtentacion, Young Dolph, Biohazard, Above & Beyond, Porter Robinson, Agnostic Front, mxmtoon, Hatebreed and Lamb of God.

The initial distribution partners are DistroKid, UnitedMasters, cdbaby and SoundCloud, the latter shifting to distribute acts this year and operating a live video channel on Twitch since May.

The tracks, to “roll out over the next few weeks”  will be available from rotating curated playlists or radio-style “genre” stations.

DistroKid and SoundCloud are offering curating ideas.

Soundtrack by Twitch

In a blog to its creators, the Amazon-owned platform advised that the music is “separated into its own audio channel so you can play music on stream without worrying about your archives being muted or receiving strikes against your Twitch channel (or wherever else your content may go)”.

“We know how important music is to your creative process, and have heard how frustrating it is to understand and navigate the complex and evolving music ecosystem,” Twitch said.

Previously a lack of cleared tracks meant Twitch could not feature radio-style listening shows, DJ sets, karaoke and lip-syncing, cover songs by the creators or even showcasing of lyrics.

The narrow exceptions obviously were music composed by the creators or those Twitch had done direct deals with.

In June, Twitch was hit with a spate of take-own notices for music used from 2017—19 in the wake of more DJs and artists using the platform post-CVOD.

Twitch’s solution was to use the fingerprinting tool Audible Magic to identify and eradicate copyright-infringing content.

That Soundtrack launched with just indie labels is not going to go down well with the majors.

In September, Facebook’s Gaming platform finalised deals with majors Universal, Warner, Sony, BMG, and others.

30 independent labels have signed on

This is Twitch’s second attempt at an in-house library.

In 2015 it started Twitch Music Library but it was quietly jettisoned last year.

Other online video platforms with their own libraries for creators include YouTube’s Audio Library and Facebook’s Sound Collection.