Twitch launched a pair of music-centric initiatives today which make its streaming service more attractive to recording artists. The first, Twitch Music Library, gives streamers access to a catalog of free music that they can play while they’re broadcasting video on the service. The service is open to any artist with more than 250,000 followers on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook who is okay with their music being broadcast over a stream.
The library pairs with Twitch’s automatic detection of copyrighted audio, which the company launched last year. Streamers who play tracks they don’t have a license to broadcast will find recordings of their streaming sessions muted for 45 minutes at a time around the offending track. Tracks included in the music library won’t trigger the muting system.
Streamers who want to blast the latest top 40 tracks will be disappointed by the library’s selection – it’s fairly limited at the moment, and focused heavily on EDM in its first release. But for people who want to make sure that their videos stay un-muted and avoid copyright claims, it may be the best way to go.
In addition, the Amazon-owned video streaming service launched a new category of Music streams so that people can share music with the site’s audience of interested viewers. The category will showcase artist performances and radio shows created by certain music labels so that people can rock out when they don’t want to watch video games.
Amateur disk jockeys shouldn’t get their hopes up just yet: right now, the only radio-style programming allowed on Twitch are shows produced by labels. The site’s rules still prohibit karaoke sessions and dance parties, too.