Twitch continues move into music with Ultra festival deal
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Version 0 of 1. Twitch earned its name – and its $970m Amazon acquisition – through streaming live video footage of people playing games, from League of Legends to FIFA. But the company has ambitions to diversify, starting with music. The latest evidence is a partnership with dance music event, the Ultra Music Festival, which takes place in Miami in late March. Twitch will be live-streaming video of sets from artists including Skrillex, Avicii and Steve Aoki. Related: Twitch hack: Amazon gaming site says user details may have been stolen Twitch has also signed a sponsor for the streams: 7up. “Our community has illustrated a strong affinity for live music, making Twitch a compelling new way for artists to connect with their fans,” said chief strategy officer and head of music Colin Carrier, in a statement. This is just the latest move by Twitch to get more involved in music, though, as it targets a crossover in audience between gaming and electronic music in particular – a trend that’s been explored since the days of PlayStation title Wipeout. In July 2014, Twitch signalled its intentions by streaming a Steve Aoki DJ set from Ibiza, after surveying users on whether they wanted to watch live concerts on the service and having 80% of respondents say yes. The following month, Twitch started filtering out unlicensed background music from videos uploaded to its service, provoking complaints from users, and an apology from chief executive Emmett Shear about a “lack of communication” before the changes were introduced. In January 2015, Twitch launched a licensed “music library” for its creators to use as an alternative, with an emphasis on independent dance labels like Spinnin’ Records, Mad Decent and OWSLA. The Prodigy have also just added one of their new tracks to the library, as part of a promotional campaign for their new album that included livestreaming an interview on Twitch. Music as a first expansion category for Twitch makes sense: just look at YouTube, where music and games are the two most popular categories of video. YouTube has worked with several music festivals on live streams, including Coachella and Bonnaroo in the US. There are also a number of sites focusing on streaming live DJ sets, including Boiler Room and the video arm of Ministry of Sound. Related: Twitch boss calls the end of games consoles Intriguingly, the Ultra Music Festival has its own channel on YouTube already, with more than 760,000 subscribers and an archive of live sets. By contrast, Ultra’s official Twitch channel has less than 4,000 followers at the time of writing. “We don’t tolerate mediocrity and our switch to Twitch is yet another step in the continuum,” said Ultra’s Adam Russakoff as the new partnership was announced. The announcement was somewhat overshadowed, however, by reports that Twitch had been hacked, putting users’ personal details at risk. The company is requiring users to create new passwords and re-link their accounts to Twitter and YouTube. Amazon paid $970m for Twitch in 2014, gazumping Google, which had been in pole position to acquire the company earlier that year. Twitch ended 2013 with 45 million monthly viewers, but more than doubled that to 100 million by the end of 2014. |