Despite Twitch's DMCA issues, music stream views showed major growth throughout May

If you’ve kept up on Twitch and its rules, you are likely painfully aware of just how strict the rules have gotten when it comes to licensed music and DMCA takedowns on the streaming platform in the last year. Twitch has provided some solutions, but many streamers still have to take an exorbitant amount of care to make sure their content doesn’t get claimed or struck. You’d think that hampers streaming specifically dedicated to music, but according to StreamElements and Rainmaker.gg’s recent State of the Stream report for May, music streaming on Twitch has actually been growing month over month.

StreamElements posted its May 2021 State of the Stream report on June 17, 2021, with data from its analytics partner Rainmaker.gg. It included quite a few stats. For one, Resident Evil Village broke the top ten categories, having launched last month. For two, and perhaps more surprisingly, music streams are growing. DJs, indie music scenes, and the arrival of Rolling Stone on Twitch in March made for a huge growth of musical streams going throughout May - over 25 million hours watched.

Popular top music streamers like Sintica and matthewkheafy were joined by the likes of Rolling Stone, which just started streaming on Twitch in March 2021.

It was back in October 2020 that Twitch streamers saw a sudden influx of DMCA takedowns on their VOD logs, in some cases forcing the takedowns of hundred of hours worth of content. It followed the final release of Soundtrack by Twitch, which was meant to provide a DMCA-friendly solution to music during streaming, and Twitch itself went on to apologize and share information on how to avoid content claims, but the situation still put an unsettling damper on the feasibility of having music on stream.

That said, it would appear that a few months after these issues have occurred and the community has acclimated, music is stronger than ever on Twitch. Whether by indie or established musical talent, folks all over the board are keeping the beat alive on the most popular streaming platform and it will be interesting to see if the category continues to grow with groups like Rolling Stone officially getting involved in the streaming scene.