Project Proposal

Twitch DMCA Solution

This project targets the current predicament that Twitch and other streaming platforms are experiencing, where the streamers on their platform (main form of business) play music from big industry names that are copyrighted and protected by Federal law. Twitch finally cracked down on this unpermitted use of copyrighted music late last summer and forced large-scale panic amongst their customers that have spent years on their site, growing a community and storing old videos that are like memories for those years.

Twitch set the rules and told their customers how it was going to be, and now Twitch streamers are in a sort of limbo where some have decided to conform to the Twitch rules and stick strictly to copyright-free playlists when playing music on stream. But there are many streamers who refuse to stop playing copyrighted music and insist that they won't be punished or don't care about the punishment, thinking that they'll just be fine in the end.

Twitch has daily viewer activity in the millions. Top streamers can reach anywhere from 20,000 to 60,000 live viewers on good nights. Their events sell out stadiums, filled with content creators, pros, and viewers. Their community is tight-nit and this makes bringing music back to streams in a rightful manner a sort of necessity right now.

My proposed solution to the current problem, which would put everyone's worries to rest about being DMCA'd, is to let streamers play music on stream without actually playing music on stream. This could be done via a Twitch extension on Twitch, and through application integration on YouTube and other streaming media.

To bring music back, it would require not obstructing current license agreements that many people already hold. Subscribers of Spotify and iTunes pay these platforms so that they, a single individual or group of members, can listen to music. Record companies allow these platforms to distribute these licenses. But these licenses do not encompass music ON stream in front of a stadiums worth of people.

So what is the actual solution?

Two Steps:

The streamer must layer their audio such that their Spotify/iTunes/media does NOT play on stream. This MUST be done so that there is NO music playing on stream. This is similar to sharing a window vs sharing an entire screen on Zoom, you can exclude certain segments on your computer.
As stated earlier, their must be a Twitch extension or in-app integration. This integration will link the Twitch user's music player account and their Twitch account upon first-use. Then, after this, any time the viewer enters a stream they can click this extension to enable it and it will sync their Spotify/iTunes/media app with the streamer's app so that their music is playing at the same time, without playing through a stream. The only license being used is the one that both parties paid for, no extra contracts or clauses.

What's the catch?

There are a lot of variables and a lot of hazards. Twitch extensions are underused so viewers may never use it, streamers might still be apathetic to a way out, and most importantly is the stream delay. Stream delay will cause the biggest hiccups for this solution, because if you are live-sync'd with the streamer's Spotify, then technically you will hear audio that does not line up with their stream if their stream has a 5 second delay but your music has no delay. There are also other factors like lag on any end: the streamer's end, the twitch servers, or the viewer's end

From technical to cultural hurdles, this 'solution' may entail more work than it is worth. But it would mean potentially millions more streams per day from music player platforms, depending on how many viewers have subscriptions and how many would participate. Twitch may take too long to solve their problem, and it has the potential to bubble up and turn into something worse if left unattended.

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