Twitch CEO Dan Clancy says that DJs who stream their sets on Twitch will soon have to share their revenue with record labels. However, Twitch plans to cover some of the cost. In order to implement this, Twitch may have to track all music played by DJs on the platform. If copyrighted music is used in a stream, the streamer will have to disclose how much money they made. The label will then receive a portion of this amount. Is this a better deal for musicians and producers than the current system?
Revenue Sharing on Twitch: New Rules for DJs and Labels
It’s still unclear when Twitch plans to put this new system into effect. But it will initially only apply to DJ sets, as different rules apply to other live streams and video-on-demand services. Clancy unveiled the new plans in a Twitch interview with streamer TweakMusicClips and said that the new revenue sharing rules are coming soon. However, his company plans to share the financial burden with the streamers.
With this new system, Twitch aims to avoid copyright takedown requests and achieve a fair revenue split between artists and the platform. Twitch currently pays labels for the use of copyrighted material, a solution that isn’t viable in the long run. Labels have reportedly only accepted this deal because they are aware that Twitch is working on a different, more profitable solution.
What do you think? As a musician, I think these new rules from Twitch are quite interesting and could lead the way for other streaming platforms. It’s only fair that DJs who play our songs live on Twitch should pay us for it – especially as they’re making money off of our music. But I assume that some DJs will see this quite differently …
More information about the new Twitch rules for DJs
Note: This article by Marcus Schmahl originally appeared in German on gearnews.de.
