Twitch has this week introduced a new creator tool it calls Soundtrack by Twitch, in a bid to take all the hassle out of playing music on streams.
Choosing to use music on a live stream means navigating a minefield of usage rights. Even if you think you've got the required permission to play songs, your recorded stream can end up being muted, or worse, your channel gets a strike against it. Soundtrack should stop both of those from happening if it works as intended.
Soundtrack consists of a "curated collection fo rights-cleared music and integrates with your streaming software to separate your audio sources." So by choosing music from the collection, you're guaranteed to avoid muted archives and channel strikes. However, as TechCrunch points out, Soundtrack doesn't have any agreements signed with the major music labels, so while the collection is being described as "vast" by Twitch, it's still limited in scope.
The labels and publishers already signed up for Soundtrack includes Alpha Pup, Anjunabeats, Blkbox, cdbaby, Chilled Cow, Chillhop Music, Create Music Group, Dim Mak, Distrokid, Empire, future classic, LabelWork, Monstercat, mxmtoon, Nuclear Blast, Popgang, Pure Noise Records, Season of Mist, Songtradr, Soundcloud, Soundstripe, Symphonic, Text Me Records, Westwood Recordings, and United Masters.
Twitch is requesting any musician, label, or publisher interested in adding their music to Soundtrack visits the help page to learn how. For now, Soundtrack is in beta and there's a waiting list streamers can join if they want to try it out.