As soon as Covid hit , just about every DJ has turned to streaming live DJ sets , including myself. Live streaming , at first , became hugely popular and quite successful for allot of DJs out there on Facebook. They could directly interact with their audience whilst playing their sets. But eventually copyright infringement , due to broadcasting policies , came into play causing streams to either be abruptly stopped or muted in some cases.
DJs then flocked to the next best thing , Twitch . Twitch is more well known for live game streaming , but in recent years has become popular for IRL chat streams and more recently live music streams. But again , just like Facebook , broadcasting policies and infringement came into play and once again these live DJ streamers were getting their streams cut during their streams or having parts of their stream muted. This by the way did also affect all the other streamers(not just DJs) on their channels as any music that was copyrighted, that was being played during their stream , would mean they would get their streams cut , in some serious cases , temporary or permanent bans . Just last week during Blizzcon , Metallica were performing live and Twitch muted the stream whilst they were performing.
Then there’s YouTube live . From my opinion is basically the same as Twitch , albeit not so harsh when it comes to bans , which you can also stream your sets but you might get sections of your stream muted or cut out completely .
Due to all the live DJ streaming popularity , Mixcloud threw their hat into the live streaming ring and have now introduced a , subscription based , live streaming service called ‘Mixcloud Live’ . Basically you’ll need a Mixcloud Pro account to make you eligible , the cost is $15 per month or $135 per year. Mixcloud have basically setup a system whereby , with your monthly subscription , they deduct a certain percentage from this and then pay the artists of the tracks you’ve played. In turn this means no more cut off or muted streams . Allot of people simply don’t have the funds to pay this monthly/yearly fee and they don’t want to be take the online DJ streaming ‘thing’ too seriously . Some just want to hop on the decks and play a short set for their friends . Which is totally understandable . From another aspect , there are artists/labels who want to get paid for their tracks been broadcast live on the internet . Which again is also totally understandable .
There has been talk about Twitch tightening measures with regards to copyright and could be making things even more difficult to stream live sets. Allot of DJs are now playing more unknown ‘underground’ tracks in the hope that these lesser known songs will not have any copyright . There are still allot of DJs broadcasting on all of these platforms and are just simply hoping that they wont get their streams cut or get banned . I know only a few people who stream on Mixcloud and they seem that , that is the best option .
For me personally I stream simultaneously on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook using ReStream . I find that Facebook is the harshest and more strict when it comes to streaming as majority of the time they will cut my stream completely . YouTube I find is the most lenient , I have streamed many hours on their platform and have had only 2 tracks be copyrighted to the point where they had to ‘trim’ the section of the stream leaving the rest untouched . This is how I will be going forward in the future. No one knows when the clubbing scene will be back again and in what capacity , so for now this is how I am going forward.
With all of the above mentioned , where do we go from here ? So what’s next in the live streaming world ? The simple truth , in my opinion , is that no one knows. Things are getting more difficult for us trying to stream. . Allot of DJs are streaming cos this is there ‘breakaway’ from reality and to help them mentally get through this pandemic. With everything going on in the world right now this is our space to express our creative art . I think for the meantime we will have to make do with what we have until things return to normal and we are able to play in front of a live crowd .
