Facebook Gaming has scored music licenses that its partner streamers can use without the worry of copyright infringements, like what happened to Twitch creators in July. Not only will it allow more enjoyable streaming with background music, it also saves streamers costly legal battles.
Facebook Gaming was launched in April as the social media giant's direct competitor for Twitch. Instead of discouraging streamers to use background music, Facebook worked out licensing agreements with the big industry names, so streamers can play copyrighted music.
In a blog post, Facebook Gaming acknowledged that creators and entertainers want to play music while doing livestreams of their games, but understand the complexity of music rights. "Instead of suggesting you go to music law school to figure it all out, we want to make the whole process a lot easier so you can focus on being a great streamer," the blog stated.
Facebook's partnership with the music industry will "open up a vast catalogue of popular music" that Facebook Gaming Partners can play to hype up their livestreaming experience. Included on the licenses that Facebook Gaming gathered include Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, BMG publishing, Merlin, Kobalt Music Group, and many others. The music range from pop hits, hip hop, dance floor beats, and even 80s classics.
This is the first for the game streaming industry, which resulted in at least one creator who has requested the same with Amazon-owned Twitch.
Currently, the licenses are only for Facebook's streaming partners, but Facebook Gaming vowed to provide creators under its Level Up program to get the same "backstage passes." The company will provide updates once available.
Facebook Gaming with music: Do's and Don'ts
Facebook Gaming streaming partners can already start streaming their own playlists using their choice of music players. The social media giant is also looking at having new partnership opportunities to build a music integration.
However, Facebook warned that the creator should livestreaming about gaming with background music, but "playing DJ without gaming is a no-no." The license only covers gaming livestreamed videos as well as on-demand versions of those livestreams. It also covers short clips created by the audience from your streams.
Edited videos that are uploaded later are not covered, so creators must remove the music used on the livestream, and pick other music from the Facebook Sound Collection.
While Facebook's music rights cover more than 90 countries and wide-range of genres, the complete list is not yet available, so it is better to be cautious of what music to use. Nevertheless, the restricted tracks are rare, but creators will be notified via email or Facebook notifications if the music they played is restricted.
"If a restricted track is played, you'll get notified and we suggest avoiding the track in question from any future stream," Facebook noted.
Playing a restricted track means that a video will be muted or blocked, so it is better to check the notifications to learn what actions will me taken and to avoid interruptions during livestreams in the future.
Regardless of these minimal limitations, this step is still a huge one for the streaming industry that would surely provide great streaming experience both for the creators and the audience.
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Written by CJ Robles
