Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Today, Twitch releases Soundtrack, a new product that allows streamers to play music while they’re live — or, at least, that’s the simplest way to explain it. If the product works the way Twitch says it does, Soundtrack will be much more than just a way to play rights-cleared music while you’re broadcasting. It might change how you think about using music on Twitch entirely.
The issue that Soundtrack is solving is pretty simple: if music is copyrighted, you can’t use it while you’re streaming unless you have the rights to those songs. If you do happen to use copyrighted music during a broadcast, there’s not a whole lot Twitch can necessarily do because it’s being played live. If viewers make clips from that broadcast, however, or the…