The US music industry has filed a new series of takedown requests against livestreaming platform Twitch, potentially putting its users in a tight spot once again.
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Twitch emailed its users last week to inform them that it had recently received 1,000 new DMCA takedown notices regarding unlicensed music use, all of which involved VODs. Generally, that means fan-made clips and archived live footage. It’s the latest chapter in an ongoing battle between Twitch, its users, and the music industry, which has seemingly spent the better part of the past year scouring Twitch for signs of unlicensed music.
“If a streamer were to do an IRL stream and you hear a top 40 song playing in the background for more than 10 seconds, that stream and the VOD afterward would be subject to DMCA,” Chris Alsikkan, a variety streamer on Twitch, said in a direct message to Lifewire. “Twitch needs to do a better job of negotiating with these labels like YouTube has. The current system doesn’t work.”
2020 was a big year for Twitch. During the first few months of quarantine, when most other forms of entertainment were postponed or canceled, Twitch’s audience skyrocketed. In December 2019, analysts estimated Twitch’s traffic at around 900 million hours watched; a year later, in December 2020, that had grown 83% to 1.7 billion hours.