If you are a musician looking to get started on Twitch, make sure you check out our getting started for artists guide.

Music Guidelines

Twitch values the work of songwriters, musicians, and other creative artists. As a company committed to supporting creators, we respect, and ask our users to respect, the intellectual property of those who make music and those who own or control music rights.

We know that you may have questions about what types of music content you can safely share on Twitch. To help you better understand what uses of music are allowed, please read the sections below.

Using Music on Twitch

Put simply, you should only include music in your Twitch channel if you’re sure you have the necessary rights or authority to do so. Using unauthorized music on Twitch may result in a rights holder sending a takedown request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) or similar laws or through a separate contractual process. If a rights holder sends Twitch one of these takedown requests against content on your Twitch channel, it can result in enforcement against your channel, up to and including account termination.

Please note that subscribing to a music streaming service or buying a CD, vinyl record, or other physical media typically does not grant you rights to share that music on Twitch. Such a purchase or subscription typically grants you a personal license to access the content only for your personal and private playback. We encourage you to review each service’s terms of use and other relevant legal pages before including music from that service in your Twitch streams.

Specific Uses of Music

In the sections below, we describe several music uses you might be familiar with, along with some information about whether and how music can be used in those ways on Twitch.

Here are some example types of music content you may include in Twitch streams and on-demand content (e.g., VODs and Clips):

Music Owned by You – Original music which was written by you and either recorded or performed live by you, and for which you own or control all rights necessary to share the music on Twitch, including the rights to the recording, performance, and underlying music and lyrics. Please remember that if you have a contractual relationship with an organization that controls rights to the content you create, such as a record label or publishing company, you should make sure that you are not in violation of that relationship by sharing that music on Twitch.
Music Licensed to You – Copyrighted music owned in whole or in part by someone other than you, if you have secured a license to share it on Twitch from all of the relevant copyright holder(s). As noted above, if you plan on using a music streaming service, review that service’s terms of use and other relevant legal pages to understand what rights the service is granting you.

Here are some example types of music content you may not include in Twitch streams or recorded videos (e.g., VODs and Clips):

Radio Station-Style Broadcast – Radio station-style broadcasts of recorded music without a live visual performance, unless you own the necessary rights to stream the music on Twitch and have received prior written authorization from Twitch setting out an exemption for your channel from this rule.
DJ Set – Playing and/or mixing pre-recorded music recordings, unless you are by playing the Twitch DJ Music Catalog as a participant in the Twitch DJ Program, those recordings are owned by you, or you have been allowed by the relevant copyright holder(s) to stream the music on Twitch.
Karaoke Performance – Singing or performing with a karaoke recording unless you own the music or have been allowed by the relevant copyright holder(s) to stream it on Twitch.
Lip Synch Performance – Pantomiming, singing, or pretending to sing to a music recording, unless you own the music or have been allowed by the relevant copyright holder(s) to stream it on Twitch.
Visual Music Depiction – Lyrics, music notation, tablature, or any other visual representation of copyrighted music unless you own the music or have license(s) from the relevant copyright holder(s) to share it on Twitch.
Cover Song Performance – Performance of a song owned by someone else, unless it is a live performance in your Twitch stream or a song for which you have license(s) from the relevant copyright holder(s) to share on Twitch. If you do perform a cover song in a live Twitch stream, please make a good faith effort to perform the song as written by the songwriter(s), and create all audio elements yourself, without incorporating instrumental tracks, music recordings, or any other recorded elements owned by others.

Uses Permitted by Law

Our community is a place for streamers to express themselves in remarkable, creative and sometimes transformative ways. In addition to sharing the guidelines above, we think it’s important to note that not all musical works are copyrighted and not all unauthorized uses of copyrighted music are infringing uses. Some examples include uses of works in the public domain and uses of copyrighted works that qualify for a defense under fair use and similar laws outside the US. We recommend reviewing the counter-notification and retraction policies in our DMCA Guidelines if you believe you have received a takedown notification from a rights holder as the result of a mistake or misidentification.

How This Impacts You

If you violate these guidelines, your content may be subject to a takedown notification from music rights holders under our DMCA Guidelines and/or penalties under our Reporting Process for Participating Music Rights Holders (“Music Reporting Process”), which are summarized below. In addition, your channel may be subject to account enforcement or your content may be muted if Twitch systems detect certain music uses in a stream, as described below.

DMCA Process

The DMCA and similar laws around the world require services like Twitch to take certain actions when rights holders claim that users have infringed their copyrights on the service. Twitch has established guidelines that describe how Twitch receives notifications of claimed infringement from rights holders, allows creators to dispute those notifications, removes allegedly infringing material, and issues strikes under its repeat infringer policy. This process applies for all types of copyrighted works, including music. For more information, please see our DMCA Guidelines.

Music Reporting Process

Twitch enters into contractual arrangements with certain music rights holders that establish parameters for how their copyrighted works can be used on the service. These arrangements provide for a separate reporting and handling process, which we call the Music Reporting Process. This process gives more flexibility to creators who inadvertently or incidentally use these rights holders’ copyrighted works in their Twitch channels. For certain egregious uses of these rights holders’ copyrighted works, Twitch will issue a warning to creators for their first offense, and issue penalties for subsequent offenses. Twitch may also suspend livestreams and/or delete recorded videos that include copyrighted music in a prohibited way. For more information, please see our Music Reporting Process.

Proactive Detection of Copyrighted Audio

Twitch also implements systems to identify copyrighted audio. We may mute VODs and delete Clips where our audio recognition system detects copyrighted audio in them. If you have the necessary rights to share music or other copyrighted audio in your Twitch VODs, we want to ensure that your VODs are not muted. To learn about how to appeal muted audio, please read our help article on How To Appeal Muted Content.

We may also issue an account enforcement if Twitch systems detect the following music uses in a stream: (1) a pre-release or unreleased musical sound recording (i.e., music that was not released by the rights holder(s) to the public at the time it was included in the stream) or (2) a musical sound recording from the Twitch DJ Music Catalog was included in DJ content on a channel that was not enrolled in the Twitch DJ Program. For information about how to appeal an enforcement action, please visit this Appeals page.