How To Play Background Music On Twitch
Today, more than 10 popular Twitch streamers tried to kick off their streams, only to find a nasty surprise waiting for them: they’d been kicked off Twitch for 24 hours. The reason? They played copyrighted music during their streams.
Playlists are available to listen to for free on Spotify. Link attribution to music.twitch.tv requested. Monstercat – You can play the Monstercat Twitch channel for free (change the quality settings to Mobile so it doesn’t bog down your computer without losing audio quality) in the background of your stream on Twitch.
Streamers xQc, Sinatraa, Daequan, Alfie, Avxry, KittyPlays, Pokelawls, Sneaky, Castro1021, Nico, Symfuhny, and Solluminati have all reported 24-hour suspensions for the same reason: Digital Millennium Copyright Act violations, or as they’re more commonly known on Twitch, DMCA strikes. The strikes allegedly came from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry—according to emails multiple streamers claim are from Twitch—and may have been tied to a song by rapper Juice Wrld.
“This organization has asserted that it owns this content and that you streamed that content on Twitch without permission to do so,” reads one of the emails, as posted by KittyPlays. “As a result we have cleared the offending archives, highlights, and episodes from your account and given you a 24 hour restriction from broadcasting.”
If you’ve watched any Twitch streams at all in your life ever, this might come as a surprise to you. After all, pretty much everybody on Twitch uses music. Sometimes it’s royalty-free, but it’s not uncommon to hear familiar hits during big streamers’ shows. Some streamers have playlists going in the background for the entirety of multi-hour streams. Others—Kotaku’s own channel included—put on some chill music before a stream is about to start, to let viewers know it’s time to tune in. To account for this, sometimes Twitch auto-mutes audio in portions of stream archives. Otherwise, people don’t usually get in trouble for it.
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That doesn’t mean they can’t get in trouble for it, though. Twitch’s rules state that any content owned by somebody else is fair game for DMCA takedown if the owner decides to claim it. This applies to songs, as well as video clips and things of that nature—and even games like Persona 5, though publisher Atlus ultimately walked back its restrictions in that case.
Twitch keeps getting bigger and bigger, so it seems only natural that, at some point, big record labels and music companies would start cracking down. That in mind, people have already started providing guides that point streamers in the direction of music that’s not subject to such strict restrictions.
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But this particular DMCA storm might have actually been an accident, despite initial appearances to the contrary. Two of the temporarily banned streamers, Avxry and Daequan, were set to compete in this week’s Friday Fortnite tournament, which is run by YouTube shit-stirrer by whom all other shit-stirrers are judged, Keemstar. Keemstar claims to have spoken with Juice Wrld’s record label, Interscope, who apparently said that its “automatic system hit big streamers by accident.” Kotaku reached out to Interscope and Twitch for comment, but as of publishing, neither had replied.
Shortly after Keemstar said that (and also yelled a bunch on Twitter), however, Daequan and Avxry were un-banned, lending credence to Keem’s claims. He says he also mailed Interscope about retracting DMCAs issued to other streamers. So far, Alfie, xQc, Sinatraa, and Nico have also been unbanned.
Background audio is now available on the Xbox One thanks to the Summer Update, here's how it works!
First, you need an app that supports background audio. At present, only Universal apps such as Cast and the Xbox One Preview version of Microsoft Groove. In the future, more apps will be joining the background audio party, such as the Windows 10 YouTube app myTube.
How to play audio in the background on your Xbox One
How To Play Music On Twitch Stream
- First, download an app that supports background audio. Search for Groove Music (only on the Xbox One Preview) or the podcasting app 'Cast' in the store. More background audio apps are on the way, including Pandora, and more. We'll update this article with all the background music apps once they go live!
Using Cast as an example, open the app and find a podcast to listen to using its search tools. Use your cursor and select play.
- When the audio is playing, you can then begin multi-tasking, moving into games and other apps.
- To access the background audio controls, double-tap the Xbox button on your controller. This will snap the guide. If you have background audio running, it will automatically select the Multitasking tab.
- From this menu, you can select track skipping, background audio volume mixer, and select the full-screen button to jump back into the app delivering background sound.
The Xbox One Summer Update also brings Cortana, various other Universal Windows Platform applications and much more to the console. For more information on this summer's update, see the links below!
What's the first thing you'll play on the Xbox One's background audio? Let us know in the comments!
Need more?
Check out our other articles for more info on the Xbox One Summer Update.