During the BlizzConline 2021, the band Metallica performed. However, those watching the short concert on the Twitchgaming channel heard only royalty-free 8-bit music instead of the song. This is probably due to the issues Twitch has with the music industry.
What exactly happened? During BlizzCon, Metallica played the song “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Those who followed the performance on the Blizzard website or YouTube could enjoy the song. However, the “Twitchgaming” channel viewed it a bit differently.
Here, only the beginning of the song was heard. After that, the video went silent for a moment, and subsequently, royalty-free 8-bit folk music was played, which did not fit at all with Metallica.
A corresponding clip was published on Twitter, showing the reactions of the Twitch chat:
How did the reactions turn out? On the internet, Twitch’s action caused a lot of head shaking and some funny remarks towards Metallica. For example, under one video on YouTube, it says:
- “From the depths of hell to Animal Crossing.”
- “I preferred their older songs.”
- “Finally give them a break. They’ve been in the scene for 40 years, so it’s only natural for them to experiment with a new sound and genre.”
Some see it as a kind of karma that is now catching up with the band. They sued the music provider Napster in 2000 because their music was shared there. At that time, the band was accused of greed and profiteering, and now they have basically been “censored by the internet.”
Twitch has issues with licensed music
Why was other music played? Twitch has been in conflict with the music industry for some time. The industry has made serious accusations against Twitch: Twitch does not care about the rights of artists, which is why they allow daily violations of artists’ rights on their platform.
In fact, many streamers on Twitch used licensed music for years to accompany their livestreams in the background.
Therefore, Twitch tightened the rules in May 2020, and since then, there have been repeated copyright penalties and related bans. Some Twitch streamers were prosecuted for old videos and clips, leading some to preemptively delete their life’s work from Twitch.
Twitch even recommends users turn off the music in games to be on the safe side.
Although Twitch has since admitted to making mistakes, there are still problems and discussions. This is particularly noticeable when it comes to the topic of music in video games.
Especially in games like Guitar Hero, which revolve mainly around music, the curious situation becomes clear. One streamer thus found a creative solution and created the sounds himself:
Over 1 million people watch a clip of a Twitch streamer circumventing music bans
