The DMCA continues to terrorize Twitch streamers, but a new music licensing deal may be taking place. It’s being said Twitch and the NMPA (National Music Publishers’ Association) are about to sign a new deal to put an end to this drama and stress once and for all. Twitch is probably tired of punishing their bigger streamers over the DMCA issues, and so many content creators have deleted thousands of hours of work for fear of being banned. So many people were watching Twitch during the pandemic. It has to be upsetting to know that your content (or someone you know) content could end at a moment’s notice over some music.

Update: As more information on the Twitch music licensing deal has come to light, it turns out the agreement made doesn’t allow streamers to play copyrighted music at all. The major difference is now that streamers don’t have to worry about immediate punishment, or potential lawsuits if they accidentally have music they don’t own. This came courtesy of Zach Bussey on Twitter.

Twitch began things by allowing record labels to file complaints about their music being used in livestreams and old content. This is due to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which the streamers were not adhering to. Now DMCA takedowns could happen a lot more frequently, and three infractions could result in a permanent ban from the platform. So VODs were scrubbed, music was played less frequently, and IRL streamers had to be way more careful about where they went and what was in the background.

It’s being said in a report by Billboard that both Twitch and the NMPA are very close to signing a deal that could stop this once and for all. We could hear the results of this by the end of September, according to sources. It’s not set in stone yet, so things could change – or even fall through, so be aware of that. This music licensing deal with Twitch has apparently been in the works for years. 

If this music licensing deal goes through for Twitch and the NMPA, we could hopefully be allowed to play a variety of licensed music instead of hearing the same old low-fi beats to chill to that we hear in virtually every livestream. Now, we’ll just have to see if there’s a catch. Will Twitch extend this only to Partnered streamers, or could everyone take advantage? Will there be any kind of fee levied to the streamer, or will some of their sub/donation money go towards this? We don’t know the exact terms, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Twitch hasn’t always been friendly to their content creators, so we’ll just have to see. It would be nice to know that our favorite content creators – and our own personal streams – could stop fearing a random DMCA ban.