What's the policy on listening to music while you game?

Fire

I've read before that if you're a partner you're not allowed to stream any copyrighted music whatsoever, but I see tons of SC2 streamers (and others) streaming copyrighted music while they play, either from their own libraries or from places like Pandora. I've read before they doing this will get you shut down, yet they never do.

What's the actual policy on this? There isn't a CLEAR posting of it anywhere.

Horror

When you stream we expect you to only play content you own, or have requested the rights to use.

When it comes to music, it's actually not that difficult to request streaming rights, and from what I have heard from word of mouth, rather cheap. Some may have done this, others may not.

For the ones who have not, the content owner could close their channel with the click of a button if they were unhappy about this, and there would be nothing we could do to ever reopen the channel without the content owners permission. People who are profiting off the usage of their works (partners for example) are much more likely to anger the owners for that content, and are much more likely to be targeted due to their larger audiences.

So in short, we definitely recommend no one risk having their channel shut down for ever over a silly song. Songs have copyrights just like movies do.

Fire

If the music is played in the game you're streaming, how does that factor in? Gmod servers are known to play songs at random, and any game with a mic system is prone to people playing music over the mic.

SourNotHardcore

There's a line as to what's allowed and what's not allowed. Games like Rock Band, Guitar Hero and DJ Hero are allowed to be streamed since it's a part of the game. As for the Gmod servers and of the like, it really just depends on how the copyright holders feel. In my opinion, if it was a little clip of the song I would be OK with it, but if it happens to play the whole song then that may be a different story.

lifetimeblood

Stuff like that probably falls under the "Fair Use" clause, but i'm no law expert. :D

Horror

Fair use requires you aren't using the content to profit. Not only do some partners profit from their streams, but all of your streams are hosted on a for-profit website, so when they send the DMCA notice to us, the only option is to remove the infringing content, which would be your channel.

wazli

So are we allowed to play music from websites like pandora? Because I have seen a lot of that.

spirituosa

^this

and i would like to ask about if we stream a game but listen to other game music/soundtracks. would it be the same like normal music because it's not the actual ingame music or is it allowed?

e.g. i play ocarina of time but listen to vvvvvv,megaman,final fantasy songs,w/e...

kalum2k7

I see progamers streaming music all the time, is this because they have the rights or has noone reported them?

kamano77

I came here actually looking for an answer on streaming from a free internet radio station in the background, same as wazli asked. I personally listen to di.fm stations all the time, and would love to be able to play music from those stations in the background if I'm streaming myself playing something.

I sent an email to di.fm asking what their thoughts were on it, but their contact page says very bluntly that they don't often get to respond to emails, so I figured I'd ask here as well and see if internet radio streaming is by and large okay to do, or a potential problem.

Horror

The people broadcasting the music could be sending out music that is public domain, or music they have paid for the rights to share.

I don't know anything about the legal status of each song so there is little further advice I can give. It basically stays at, if you stream someone elses content when they don't want you to, that is infringement and they can take you down. You need to pay for specific rights to share things like music, simply owning a CD isn't even enough.

As I always say, copyright laws are confusing, and annoying.

gooeythedragon

i have a question to. I listen to my song on last.fm on my computer can i play thoese song while i game?

bgeorge

It doesn't matter when you get the music, whether its iTunes, Amazon, CD rips, Spotify, Last.fm or Pandora, its all the same and covered by the same copyright. 

gooeythedragon

aghhh!!! so now im just gonna have to find free music now. Reset my whole playlist

marc2540

As a non-partner, am I allowed to use songs under this license?

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

Or is it still commercial-use?

Horror

Marc, yep! at least it seems logical to me.

havokk

Just found out about 'Pandora for business' 
http://www.dmx.com/pandora/; looks like this would provide proper licensing .

kashitakashi

On a side note I wonder how expensive it would be if twitch has a blanket license for music for all of its broadcaster or at least the broadcaster that are under the partner program.

Fire

@kashitakashi way too much

kur1

Not to uber-necro this, but could there be talks between Twitch and Grooveshark and/or Spotify to have a partner network license agreement for songs? A percentage of each partner's ad revenue could be withdrawn if they elect to use the service or something to that effect.

Anyway, just trying to keep everything legal. My viewers love music. It's just a bummer that things can get halted so quickly from a silly little song.

contoen

So what I understand is that even if you outright bought a song on Itunes you still can't play it on your stream? Secondly, I'm still confused about the whole Pandora thing, a simple can we play Pandora or we can not is appreciated

Fire

@contoen no, buying a song on itunes does not give you the rights to play it (you don't own the rights to the song). You can't legally use pandora either, though I've sent them an email requesting licensing details on what exactly you'd need to be able to use pandora during a stream.

contoen

Thank you, sucks that there really is no simple way to play music without worry

Fire

@contoen yeah, you can play royalty free music without worry though, so there's that at the absolute very least  :)

keeker1

So, from what i gathered from all the above posts....if i ever decide to stream games, I cant even have my little clock radio playing in the background?

thejacobjohnson

@keeker1 You'd have the be making money from doing so.  And the way you worded your comment leads me to understand that you wouldn't be profiting, so you would be unrestricted in that sense.

katabasis

Sup Jacob

To add to that, pandora is bad for non partners because twitch drops ads during our streaming even if we don't profit someone is. So if a company sent twitch a copyright infringement thingy your stream would be shut down.

sudogaron

Actually I'm pretty sure Twitch.TV doesn't care what you stream regardless if you're a partner or not.  I watched 5 streams today as a test and found each one streaming "pandora" or "radio" based music from new artists/famous ones that they did not have rights to obviously. All 5 were partners and in the video history it had the same type music being used.

When I asked in the chat how they could do this: "becuase I can and I get paid more if I stream normal music" was what I was told.

So I'm going to go with if you want to be partnered and get views/followers just stream normal radio music and you won't ever get in trouble. Just make sure you are streaming the game/video you are allowed to.

Fire

@sudogaron you are never "allowed" to stream music you don't own the rights to, you are taking a risk and if the copyright holder files a dmca against your account, that's it. you're done.

The entire point is that sure, you can do it, but you're taking a massive risk by doing so. 

The more popular you become, the higher the chance of the owner of the copyright filing a complaint against your channel.

That partner's "becuase I can and I get paid more if I stream normal music" was likely pointing out that when he streams standard music more people will sit around in the stream, so by proxy he gains more money when he runs ads, because there's more people for the ad to hit.

gam3center

i have to say all this music thing is wery nice. I love to get partnerd at my channel i have stated i am NEVER going to play ANY kind of music at all ONLY when i get the right licens, and i have wrote 2 letters to the copy right holders about an agreement and i have herd NOTHING.

I can break the law and play the best music twitchTV have ever head and get TONS of subscribers, but i wont risk my account AT ALL. So i have it to do the HARD way if i want to get partner and i tell ya its going slow  haha..

But the music do help to get the sub. risk it i wont.

verndroid

Looks like the business deal with pandora is the best way to swing. For 25$ a month you can stream all the music pandora has in it's library and as far as I can see it will be legal as you are actually paying the copyright holders their due via Pandora.

So if you want to be safe you should either stop streaming music or get a business license with Pandora or a similar service.