Twitch is laying off 400 employees as part of wider cuts announced yesterday by its parent company Amazon. The post Twitch to lose 400 staff as part of latest Amazon layoffs appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

In the music-streaming world ‘programming’ usually describes playlist curation. However, Amazon Music is active in the older sense: TV shows. The post Amazon Music unveils video shows for hip-hop and Latin music appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

There’s a big figure in the latest blog post from Twitch’s chief product officer Tom Verrilli and chief monetization officer Mike Minton. The post Twitch says its streamers earned more than $1bn in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Operating in the streaming environment in 2023 is a case of balancing promotional demands from streaming and social media services. The post You Me At Six get some promotional welly from Amazon and TikTok appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Sheeran’s track ‘Celestial’ is being played over the end credits of the latest Pokémon games: Scarlet and Violet. The post Ed Sheeran’s Pokémon track causes Twitch takedown headaches appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Amazon Music really does have the bit between its teeth when it comes to livestreamed concerts. The post The 1975 set to be Amazon Music’s next concert livestream appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Moroccan-Canadian streamer Imane ‘Pokimane’ Anys is one of the biggest Twitch stars, with 9.3 million followers there. The post Spotify turns to Twitch star Pokimane for latest campaign appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Twitch’s standard revenue share for channel subscriptions is 50/50, but the Amazon-owned platform is having to have a somewhat delicate conversation with its creator community about it. The post Twitch tweaks its revenue-sharing deals with top streamers appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Artist Mabel released her new album ‘About Last Night…’ on Friday (15 July) complete with enhanced versions for two of the biggest streaming services. The post Apple and Amazon get enhanced versions of Mabel album appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Besides spawning a roster of virtual artists, League of Legends publisher Riot Games has been building itself a music compilations business. The post Riot Games launches its third ‘creator-safe’ Sessions album appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

How much money is Twitch making? Amazon doesn’t yet split that out in its financial results. However, research firm App Annie has published a figure. The post Report claims Twitch has surpassed $1bn in mobile spending appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Here’s something interesting to watch: a test by Twitch of a feature for viewers to buy ‘boosts’ for their favourite channels. The post Twitch tests letting viewers spend money to promote channels appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

‘Twitch Pro’ has more features: custom playlists, which can be shuffled while streaming, as well as curated playlists from Soundstripe’s music team. The post Soundstripe wants to help Twitch streamers avoid takedowns appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s not just Merck Mercuriadis who NMPA boss David Israelite has been criticising in recent times. The US publishing body has a long-running argument with Amazon’s live-video platform Twitch. The post Report: Twitch may soon have a deal with music publishers appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Lead: Which Twitch Mix Fits? – Music is essential to the Twitch experience, but Twitch’s formal relationship with music is still a little murky – albeit with the launch of the licensed Soundtrack by Twitch feature offering welcome progress. The power of Twitch as a marketing, communication, and community-building tool is also still open to debate […]

When we saw headlines about Twitch publishing its first ever transparency report, our news antenna started pinging. Would this be a chance to get data on how many copyright takedowns the service has been hit by from music rightsholders? When other tech firms have published similar reports, they have included takedowns in the data. Unfortunately, […]

Anyone can join Twitch, but you can’t start making decent money from it until you have ‘affiliate’ status, which unlocks features like channel subscriptions, bits and ad revenue sharing. DistroKid is the latest distributor to sign a partnership with Twitch to fast-track musicians to affiliate status, hopping over the stage where they have to stream […]

Music-focused channels were streamed for 24m hours in January, according to a report published by StreamElements using data from analytics firm Rainmaker·gg. “At this same time in 2020, it was only averaging around 4.6 million hours, which illustrates the difference a year and a pandemic can make,” claimed the report. It also breaks down the top 10 […]

Twitch continues to be a touchy subject for major rightsholders in the music industry, but Amazon’s livestreaming service is also forging partnerships with independent labels – particularly in the dance world. Defected Records, for example, which used Twitch for its online music events last year as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold. Now Defected is planning six […]

British live music promoter Scruff of the Neck is trying out a new business model on livestreaming service Twitch. It’s launching a channel called Scruff of the Neck TV, which will be airing three-hour shows with live music performances, with 10 planned this month before settling into a schedule of performances, podcasts and artist interviews from […]

Video streaming industry firm StreamElements has published its latest report on the state of the livestreaming market, using data from analytics firm Arsenal·gg. Among the claims: that Twitch saw its viewing hours grow by 83%, from 9bn hours in 2019 to 17bn in 2020. The report also suggests that in December 2020 alone, people watched Twitch […]

If you’re the kind of person who shouts at people who put their Christmas decorations too early, look away now. Dolly Parton is doing a Christmas-themed livestream for Amazon Music… on 13 November. ‘Dolly Parton’s Comin’ Home for Christmas’ will be streamed live on Amazon Music’s Twitch channel and within its app, with a performance and […]

The knock-on effects from rightsholders’ pressure on Twitch over music licensing are starting. Games publisher Electronic Arts has added a new menu option to its FIFA 21 game: ‘Disable All Music For Streaming Purposes’. That means people streaming their gameplay on platforms like Twitch will now be able to do it without any background music that […]

The timing may be awkward given the renewed DMCA takedown notices currently battering Twitch, but Amazon Music is stepping up its livestreaming activity, including with its sister platform. It’s launched a new weekly show called Breakthrough Live, which will air live performances from artists in a different genre every Tuesday. The show will be broadcast live […]

Live video streaming service Twitch has been one of the (unwitting) beneficiaries of the global pandemic, as musicians scramble to find a way to compensate for the near-total shutdown of live music. In their recent “State of the Stream” report, StreamElements and Arsenal.gg claimed that Twitch’s Q2 2020 chart bars “look like skyscrapers compared to […]

When we reported on the launch of Soundtrack by Twitch earlier this week, we had a sneaking suspicion that we’d be hearing from the publishing sector – and US representative body the NMPA’s boss David Israelite – sooner rather than later with some opinions. And lo, he’s one of the interviewees in a Rolling Stone follow-up about the wider […]

Livestreaming platform Twitch is launching a new feature, Soundtrack by Twitch, with a catalogue of licensed music for its community of creators to use in their streams. The Amazon-owned company has licensed more than 1m tracks from more than 30 independent labels and distributors for the beta launch, in what’s its second attempt at an […]

Amazon’s livestreaming video platform Twitch was already looking to do more with music before Covid-19 struck, but the pandemic has fuelled a moment where lots of musicians are also suddenly keen to do more with Twitch – and livestreaming more generally. At Music Ally’s Sandbox Summit Global online conference this week, Twitch’s VP of music […]

Having officially retired from music earlier this year, before signing what was reportedly a seven-figure exclusive deal to stream on Twitch, artist Logic is a prominent figure at the intersection of music and livestreaming. A tweet on Friday is thus making a few waves. “Too many of my gaming homies @Ninja included have wanted to play my […]

Twitch has been doing more with music and musicians, and analytics firm Chartmetric has been tracking that. The result is four new charts for music on Amazon’s live-video platform, presenting the top users by viewer hours both weekly and monthly, as well as the top users by followers both weekly and all-time. Chartmetric says it’s […]

Lead: Twitch for artists – Artists were drifting towards livestreaming platform Twitch before COVID-19 hit, and Twitch has been making overtures to musicians for a while. But since live performance was halted, interest in the platform has never been higher, and Twitch is welcoming artists – and their fans – with open arms. But Twitch demands […]

Rap battles are a perfect match for livestreaming services: not only are they fun to watch and chat about, but musically speaking, they’re original content with far fewer copyright headaches for the platform. Twitch knows all about those headaches, so its latest deal is interesting: with rap league King of the Dot. The exclusive agreement […]

Twitch may be doing more with music, but gaming remains its bread-and-butter content. Now one of the platform’s first and biggest stars is returning to it. Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins is well known to Music Ally readers: he broke livestreaming records when playing Fortnite with Drake; competed in pro-amateur tournaments of the same game with Marshmello; […]

Amazon’s Twitch live-video service may be doing more with music artists, but it’s also shutting down one of its existing music projects: karaoke game Twitch Sings. “As we look to the future, we have decided to invest in broader tools and services that will help support and grow the entire music community on Twitch. Because […]

The Artist Rights Alliance (ARA), an industry body representing songwriters and musicians, has been vocal in its criticism of Amazon, sending Jeff Bezos a letter demanding a better answer than, “I don’t know” when he was asked by the US Congress about music licensing on the Amazon-owned Twitch platform. After yesterday’s announcement of Twitch’s music livestreams being […]

It’s almost a surprise that this hasn’t happened sooner, but Amazon Music has now integrated Twitch, the live streaming service owned by Amazon, into its Amazon Music mobile apps. Artists can now livestream via Twitch, with the streams appearing on their profile page in the Amazon Music mobile app, and followers will be alerted when they […]

  *Learn more about Music and Livestreaming: reaching fans AND making money   Another day, another livestream. Well, probably another thousand of them. A year ago, livestreams were defined by their rarity, now they are defined by their ubiquity. So how to stand out in a market that has suddenly become very busy? We speak […]

We haven’t written about DouYu before, because the Chinese livestreaming video platform is focused on games rather than music. The numbers are startling though: according to its latest financial results, DouYu averaged 165.3 million monthly active users in the second quarter of this year, including 58.4 million people on mobile devices. Meanwhile, DouYu generated RMB 2.51bn […]

Music Ally is excited to announce more speakers and networking details for our forthcoming Sandbox Summit Global event.    New Speakers mxmtoon, Artist (US) The Future of Playlists Lizzy Szabo, Editor, North America, Spotify (US) Genreless Playlists, The Future of Playlists Tracy Patrick Chan, Head of Music Product & Engineering, Twitch (US) Focus on Twitch […]

Twitch is building on its recent growth of music livestreams by launching its first ever ‘Music Month’. It’ll be spending August promoting some of the musicians who are operating on its platform, including featuring their streams on the service’s homepage and its own official channel. The latter will include a show every Friday called ‘Follow […]

Another Covid-19 lockdown trend is the sharp growth of viewing hours for livestreaming video services, particularly Twitch. Industry firms StreamElements and Arsenal·gg have published their latest ‘State of the Stream’ report quantifying this growth. “Twitch’s 2nd quarter chart bars look like skyscrapers compared to Q1’s single floor dwellings,” it claimed, with a chart showing monthly viewing hours […]

On 17 July, artist Logic announced his retirement ahead of the release of (seemingly) his final album ‘No Pressure’ a week later. “It’s been a great decade. Now it’s time to be a great father,” he tweeted. As it turns out, it’s also time to sign a megabucks exclusive deal with a livestreaming video service. […]

Slowly but surely, the crossover between Amazon Music and its parent company’s Twitch subsidiary is growing. Amazon Music’s channel on the livestreaming platform has been ramping up during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the streaming service has also been throwing some promotional weight behind artists’ own streams on Twitch. Now it’s launching a series of ‘Amazon […]

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about livestreamed concerts during the Covid-19 lockdown, it’s that fans relish interactivity: at its simplest level seeing an artist read and respond to comments in between songs. Genius is going further though: it’s launching a new “performance-oriented livestreaming and experiential platform” called Genius Live, with lots of interactivity. Wiz […]

Twitch is one of the platforms seeing a big spike in usage during the Covid-19 pandemic. A new report claims that in the second quarter of this year, Amazon’s live video service was watched for 5.07bn hours. That’s up from 3.11bn in the first quarter of this year – a 62.7% quarter-on-quarter increase. The report comes […]

During the Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of musicians have been thinking about doing more with live-video platform Twitch. But what should they do? Live performances, DJ sets (even though there are issues here), fan Q&As, playing games… All these have been tried. Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park has been using Twitch to broadcast his actual creation […]

In yesterday’s bulletin, we covered the news that livestreaming platform Twitch has reminded users that DJ sets are among the “types of music content you may not use in Twitch streams or VODs”. We suggested that the new guidelines may have been in response to an uptick in copyright takedowns filed by music rightsholders, and… […]

The esports community has been chattering about Twitch’s latest guidelines on using recorded music in live broadcasts and video-on-demand uploads to its platform. Dot Esports’ top angle was the fact that using music from streaming services like Spotify is not allowed, but after looking at the guidelines, we think that there are also other points for musicians […]

Lead: We are now several weeks into lockdown and have moved far, far beyond just “doing a livestream”. There was some wavering at the start as to whether albums should be delayed by several weeks or brought forward, but now everyone is having to roll their sleeves up and get on with it. The music […]

Twitch may be preparing a slate of original, live TV shows, according to a report by Bloomberg. It claims that Amazon’s video service will be commissioning and funding “a slate of original, unscripted series that would be live and interactive, airing two to three times a week”. What’s more, the genres in play are expected to […]

Dance artist Zedd has launched an official Twitch channel. It went live on Saturday with a stream of a 90-minute concert video from his Orbit World Tour. “I’m so excited to relive this show with everyone this weekend, and while so many of us are staying at home right now, I hope that this show will […]

How’s your dubstep and UK garage knowledge? If you’re clued in, you might want to tune in for artist Plastician on his Twitch channel, where he’s been holding regular pub quizzes on the genres. He’s one of the DJs profiled in a new Pitchfork article about livestreaming, which notes that Plastician has gone more down the interaction route […]

Facebook is launching a new app today: Facebook Gaming. It’s training its sights squarely on the territory occupied by Twitch: people playing games and streaming the footage online for others to watch. According to the New York Times, the launch has been brought forward from June. “Investing in gaming in general has become a priority […]

Audio company Dolby has just launched its Dolby On app for Android, following its earlier release for iOS. It allows users to record high-quality audio and video on their smartphone. More interestingly, however, the company has also announced that the iOS version of Dolby On now works with live-video platform Twitch, enabling users to livestream […]

Amazon has been publishing games for a while now: its Amazon Game Studios division has been around since 2015. However, the company is preparing a new push, investing “hundreds of millions of dollars” in its games development and distribution business according to the New York Times. That includes big-budget PC games, but we’re just as interested […]

Let’s start today with Germany, at a time when bodies representing musicians and the music industry are pressing governments around the world for relief and support. The post Today’s positive coronavirus-related music industry news (27 March) appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Start today with the group of streaming services and tech companies announcing contributions to MusiCares’ COVID-19 Relief Fund in the US. Amazon Music, Facebook, SiriusXM and Pandora, Spotify, Tidal and YouTube Music are the services, and while no amount has been given for their contributions, MusiCares said that in less than a week it has raised “millions […]

Stuff we’re heartened by today includes Resident Advisor’s ‘Save Our Scene‘ campaign, which is mustering collecting action from the electronic music community. There’s an open letter that fans, musicians and other people in the industry can sign – more than 3,000 people so far have – with encouragement for people who want to do their […]

Amazon’s live-video platform Twitch will be watched by 37.5 million Americans this year, rising to 41.2 million in 2021. At least, that’s research firm eMarketer’s prediction: the first time it’s published estimates for Twitch’s viewership in the US. “The video streaming platform will reach 15.5% of US digital video viewers this year,” claimed the company’s blog […]

Twitch has a new music partnerships manager: Athena Koumis, formerly of Spotify and Xcite Networks. She announced her new job in social posts yesterday, making it clear that Amazon’s live-video platform wants to get more musicians streaming. “One thing I’ve yearned for working in streaming over the years is a sense of community & meaningful interaction w/ […]

Amazon’s live-video platform Twitch is best known for its gaming communities, from creators streaming their play-sessions live to professional esports tournaments. But musicians have also used Twitch. One of them is British artist and producer Dan Le Sac, who joined Music Ally at our recent Sandbox Summit conference to share some of the lessons he […]

Endel made headlines earlier this year by announcing a distribution partnership with Warner Music Group to release albums created by its AI. Its music is thus now on various streaming services, although its AI-generated soundscapes can also be accessed through its smartphone app and Alexa skill. And now, through Amazon’s live-video service Twitch too. Endel […]

By now, Music Ally readers should know Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins well: he’s the gaming star who broke Twitch viewing records when playing Fortnite with Drake and Marshmello, and who subsequently signed a deal with UMG to curate a compilation album. Yesterday, he had some big news for fans: he’s leaving Twitch, the platform he’s most associated […]

Once upon a time, remixes were usually an easy way to provide B-sides for singles and/or cuts more suited for club DJs. In the post-Despacito era, they’re becoming a strong tactic to give already-big tracks a new lease of chart / streaming life. Justin Bieber was famously part of the ‘Despacito’ remix, and now he’s […]

Amazon’s live-video service Twitch is trying a new way to persuade people to stump up cash to support their favourite broadcasters: subscriber streams. Those would be exclusive streams for subscribers only, although casual visitors to a channel will see previews, as a way to persuade them to upgrade. “We could definitely see competitive streamers taking […]

Here’s a generational test: do you remember Bebo? Did you have a profile on it? The social network’s heyday, in western Europe at least, was in 2006-2008, before an $850m acquisition by AOL that coincided neatly with Facebook’s emergence to leave Bebo trailing in its wake. Yet Bebo has continued to exist, through further acquisitions, […]

We know Teespring well for its work with music companies and artists around merchandise, but it also has a thriving business making merch for ‘creators’ – social and livestreaming-video stars. That’s more the focus for its latest announcement: a new partnership with Amazon’s live-video platform Twitch. It’ll enable viewers of Twitch streams to buy merchandise […]

Painting, Doctor Who and crowds playing Pokémon have all attracted healthy audiences on Amazon’s Twitch live-video service. Could round-the-clock AI-generated piano music be the platform’s next craze? Okay, it lacks the star (whether human or animated-monster) quality of those past trends, but music-AI startup Melodrive is giving it a whirl anyway. It has launched ‘Twitch plays Melodrive’, […]

If you were a a popular gamer on video service Twitch, how much do you think game-publishers would pay you to promote their new titles? According to the Wall Street Journal it’s between $25k and $50k an hour, for those broadcasters capable of drawing audiences of more than 15,000 simultaneous viewers. The report suggests that big publishers […]

Dance label Anjunabeats wants more of its music to be used by people streaming their gaming sessions on Amazon’s Twitch platform. “Starting today, we’ve made 350+ tracks available to soundtrack your @Twitch livestream!” tweeted the label earlier this week. “Throw down without fear of being muted with our playlist of Twitch-ready tracks here.” That’s a link to Spotify […]

Amazon’s live-video service Twitch announced plans to launch a karaoke-style game called ‘Twitch Sings’ in October 2018, providing its community of creators with a way to sing solo or duets, while getting viewers to suggest songs and challenges. In March this year, the game (still in beta) spawned an X Factor-style contest called Twitch Sings: Stream Star, […]

Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins has become one of the go-to influencers in the gaming world in recent times: Electronic Arts reportedly paid him $1m to promote its new game Apex Legends earlier this year for example. Meanwhile, he’s also firmly on the music industry’s radar thanks to his compilation partnership with Universal Music, as well as his live-streamed Fortnite […]