Will copyright crackdown end live DJ sets and radio shows on Twitch?

Fears are that live DJ sets and radio-style shows could be off the menu on Twitch as the streaming service starts to crack down on copyright infringement.

The Amazon owned platform was hit this week with a sudden influx of DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaints dating 2017 to 2019.

Most of these are coming from the powerful no-nonsense Recording Industry Association of America.

Which means that, like Facebook, Soundcloud and YouTube, Twitch is legally-bound to act on such complaints and take them down.

“This is the first time we have received mass DMCA claims against clips,” said Twitch in a statement. “We understand this has been stressful for affected creators and are working on solutions, including examining how we can give you more control over your clips.”

If creatives continue to feature background music they don’t own or have not got permission to use, their clips can be muted, and have their accounts terminated after three strikes.

Twitch has an automated system to find and mute infringing content although the strikes are handed out manually.

Some users complain they have thousands of clips – prolific user Fuslie claimed in a tweet this week he had 100,000 clips – to take down and which can be a very slow process.

As a result, they could get more strikes against them while still taking them down

Twitch has pinpointed what is on the danger list.

DJ Set – “Playing and/or mixing pre-recorded music tracks which incorporate music, other than music which is owned by you or music which is licensed for you to share on Twitch.”

Radio-Style Music Listening Show – “A Twitch stream or VOD which focuses on playing music that is not owned by you and is not licensed for you to share on Twitch.”

This also extends to “visual music depiction” like lyrics, music notation and tablature. Others in the firing line are performances covering karaoke that are not in-game, lip-synchs and cover versions.

The timing couldn’t be bad for musicians who are counting their presence on Twitch as an alternative to not going out on tour, and who are collecting money for charity through streams.

The recorded music industry is presumably cracking the whip because there is a greater use of Twitch this year, as with other apps.

For instance, there were 3.8 million unique broadcasters over February 2020 compared to an average monthly of 3.64 million in 2019.

In March 2020, there were 56,000 broadcasters on the platform at the same time, and 1.44 million concurrent viewers on average.

The most viewed game on the platform, League of Legends, reached 29 billion views by this April.

Twitch claimed 65% share of hours viewed on across-the-board game streaming (3.1 billion), and 72% hours (121.4 million) in Q1 2020.