Twitch focuses on music as it grows beyond gaming
It turns out that the Steve Aoki concert on Twitch was just the beginning of something much, much bigger. The company has announced that more music broadcasts are coming to the streaming service by way of its new "music" category. The new section is in beta, but it'll allow anyone who's creating, performing and presenting original songs to do so live on the internet. What's more, "certain established artists and labels" will have the option to host listening parties and broadcast what Twitch calls large-scale events (think festival performances) if its curators deem them a good fit. The streaming juggernaut is also teaming with BeatPort and SFX Entertainment for festival broadcasts and DJ/producer interviews, as well.
If you're a long-time streamer and think this is diluting the games-only experience -- which is totally fair -- there's a directly-related upside that'll benefit practically everyone. Now there's a library of over 500 licensed songs that you can use both in your broadcasts and archived videos. The company is working with labels like Dim Mak and Skrillex's OWSLA to provide music that won't get flagged by the site's controversial audio recognition system, and promises to keep adding more as time goes on. You can peruse the full list of tracks right here. It probably isn't a coincidence that artists who've previously been on Twitch are the ones first in line to license their music, but hey, it's better than dead air, right?
[Image credit: Shutterstock / Insago]
