Twitch Introduces Music

Shortly before Twitch was purchased last year by Amazon, the company implemented an audio recognition process that automatically muted copyrighted music. As of January 16, streamers now have a 500-song library of pre-approved music to select from.

I’m not a streamer, but 500 songs sounds like an incredibly limited selection for those who stream for more than a couple of hours a day. Twitch is promising to continually add new titles, and does have a way for independent artists to submit their music, so hopefully we’ll see more than EDM titles in the mix soon.

Along with this announcement, Twitch is adding a new Music category for artists to stream live performances. They’re promising that gaming will still be the core focus of the site, but it definitely sounds like they’re trying to appeal to a broader audience.

In a digital world, music streaming is still trying to find it’s niche. Could this be it? How would Twitch evolve if their Music category takes off? Personally, I’m curious to see where these changes take us.