- there's a catalog of music, and if you use music from this catalog, twitch won't ping you for it, but they will take your money. not clear how much yet. "These costs will vary across different monetization products. For most streamers, Twitch will be splitting these costs 50/50 with you." so i don't know how bad it is
- you can also play other stuff, like, stuff that wouldn't be in content id, and it's probably fine. but it's not clear if any of the big publishers refused to participate, so you could still get VOD muted / potentially pinged.
- it's opt-in. you can still keep streaming a dj set with VOD desktop audio off and it's hopefully fine?
- notably if you are NOT an affiliate, twitch will pay the publisher cut for for whatever you use, at no cost to you. so if you have like a kofi integration you could take donations on a non-affiliate channel that way, make money without the bastards taking even more of your money?
- i don't know if this is going to go alongside an increase in live content-id on music, i really hope not. like, my fear is that they'll content id and warn you while the stream is going rather than just silencing the VOD. but if i was running an evil corp in hell world thats what i'd do
obviously the "supporting musicians" thing is a red herring, this is about publishers and rights holders getting more money. however, the whole vod-muting thing has been a fucking embarrassment (cf. metallica performing live for a twitch event and twitch having to mute the live video because it was content-id'd). so there being some way (a la youtube (except hopefully without certain publishers being shits about it)) to actually have music on the platform without risking copyright strikes. (which are, afaik, pretty rare?) i think twitch should just pay for it themselves but lmao. obviously death to content id and all copyright.
i don't know the state of the industry right now, but Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music, which as of 2020 combined to 69% (nice) of the "market." but a bunch of "indies" including some represented by Merlin are also in? and merlin claims to be 15% of the market share. so if they're all in, that's 84% of pop music? (also merlin is nonprofit?? how??)
