In a statement released by The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and Amazon-owned livestreaming platform Twitch, the companies have announced that they are working to “work together to build productive partnerships between the service and music publishers” in order to pay artists for their streams via the Twitch platform. According to the NMPA, Twitch will provide “new opportunities” to music publishers, who will be offered “an opt-in deal”, which, the NMPA adds, will allow for “future collaborations to bring new facets to both the gaming experience and songwriter exposure”. In addition, Twitch has created new process that participating music rights holders can opt into to report certain uses of their music, to address when creators inadvertently or incidentally use music in their streams which “paves the way for the economics of new gaming models to increase visibility and revenue for songwriters”, according to musicbusinessworldwide.com.
Both the President of the NMPA David Israelite and Twitch CEO Tracy Chan have released statements about this partnership they are creating in order to build a more equitable distribution of copyright revenue in streams. Israelite says “Both NMPA and Twitch are creator-focused and our respective communities will greatly benefit from this agreement, which respects the rights of songwriters and paves the way for future relationships between our publisher members, songwriters and the service. Through our discussions, Twitch has shown a commitment to valuing musicians and to creating new ways to connect them with fans in this burgeoning and exciting space.” The agreement comes a few months after Twitch has been fraught with infringement notices from the music industry, causing “thousands” of videos to be taken off the platform between October 2020 to last June.
Twitch CEO Tracy Chan seems happy with the agreement with the NMPA, stating: “We are pleased to reach this agreement with the NMPA and excited about our shared commitment to empowering songwriters and other creators to share their work and passions while connecting with audiences. That’s what Twitch is all about, and we know that great music starts with a great song. We look forward to innovative collaborations that further unlock the incredible potential of our service and our community for music publishers and their songwriter partners.”
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