New copyright rules have been circulating on Twitch for some time, making a lot of music in streams no longer allowed. This presents a problem for many streamers and games on Twitch. Streamer JasonParadise has found a creative solution and is celebrated by hundreds of thousands of viewers for it.
Who is the streamer? JasonParadise runs a medium-sized channel on Twitch and a large YouTube channel, where he already has over 623,000 subscribers. His content mainly consists of music and rhythm games like Guitar Hero.
For the past two years, he has been less active on Twitch, due to health issues, as he says. For some time now, he has been showcasing his guitar skills live on stream again.
A clip from his stream on December 13 has already amassed over a million views and over 100,000 likes on Twitter in a short time. In it, Jason demonstrates how he circumvents the new rules regarding copyrighted music on Twitch:
Instead of showing the song he’s currently playing in Guitar Hero live, he simply covers the song himself by wildly waving his tongue and mimicking the song.
“Lülülü” instead of DMCA music
Why is he doing this? Since May, stricter rules on music usage have been in effect on Twitch. There have apparently been numerous complaints from the music industry about unlicensed music in the streams on Twitch.
This led to negotiations between Twitch and the industry resulting in many channels receiving strikes and clips being removed. In their panic, many streamers are simply deleting all of their clips themselves to avoid getting banned.
Especially games like Guitar Hero, which fundamentally rely on music and use it as a core element, this poses a problem.
DMCA poses a problem for streamers: The “Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” or DMCA, underlies these rules. To avoid receiving a strike, many streamers are now looking for alternatives and “DMCA-free music”.
The new Cyberpunk 2077 has specifically introduced a “Streamer Mode” that replaces copyrighted music with other tracks. This is meant to allow streamers to showcase the new game without issues. However, it apparently doesn’t work perfectly.
Some streamers are simply annoyed by the new rules, including major Twitch star TimTheTatMan. He sees music as part of his streaming style and does not want to give it up when playing.
This could still cause him problems, but he doesn’t really care about the consequences. He says “I’m fed up and if I get banned, then so be it.”
