Written by Erasmus William, Benn Tan and Marie Ng.
Twitch Offers Streamers Rights-cleared Music Library
Twitch has introduced a new tool, Soundtrack, that will allow its creators to add licensed music within their streams. This makes it easier to find rights-cleared music for creators who previously struggled with their archived streams muted.
Here are some of the initial lineup of supported partners includes Soundcloud, Monstercat, Distrokid, cdbaby, Empire, Westwood Recordings, United Masters, Alpha Pup, Popgang, Text Me Records, Dim Mak, Create Music Group, Chillhop Music, Anjunabeats, Soundstripe, LabelWork, mxmtoon, future classic, Nuclear Blast, Season of Mist, Chilled Cow, Pure Noise Records, Symphonic, Blkbox, and Songtradr.
Twitch Soundtrack’s Playlists and Stations are curated by Twitch staff, streamers, and industry partners, to expand the content offering with new Playlists and Stations regularly.
According to Twitch, this lineup will give creators access to a massive range of music, including artists like Above & Beyond, mxmtoon, Porter Robinson, RAC, SwuM, and others. In total, over a million tracks will be available for free use by creators.
The launch of Soundtrack comes at a time when music has become a larger part of the Twitch experience, thanks to the live-streaming platform’s adoption by artists during the COVID-19 pandemic.
There’s A Lot More to “Watch Together” on Facebook Messenger
Facebook has recently announced that Lionsgate, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Warner Bros. will be bringing new content to their Watch Together feature on Messenger. Announced earlier in September, this feature allows you to watch videos, movies, shows and other content with your friends, with up to 8 people on a Messenger video call and 50 people in Messenger Rooms. However this had only pertained to Facebook Watch videos until now.
This collaboration will see the likes of films like Hairspray, Reservoir Dogs, Karate Kid and even The Blair Witch Project, grace our screens very soon. Users can even binge on seasons of Community and Dawson’s Creek together. To use, simply start a Messenger video call, or create a Messenger Room and select “Watch Together” from the Swipe up menu to access all the videos suggested to you.
Watch Together is also a great platform for creators to watch and engage with an audience while watching a video and vice versa. To celebrate its launch previously, Facebook partnered with Melissa Alcantara to produce a series of workout videos that allow people to work out together virtually, “and motivate each other of their fitness goals.”
Pinterest has become the next platform to launch Story Pins after deliberating on various versions of the format for almost a year. Using the popular stories format, Story Pins will combine multiple pages of images, videos, voiceovers and overlaid text and will be available in beta today.
One interesting note about Pinterest’s Story Pins would be that it will differ from other social media platforms as these pins will not disappear after a period of time, and can still be searchable. Like many other features on Pinterest, a Story Pin can be saved for later, and can be used for personal lists or favourite items. With this new feature, content can be created on the platform by users rather than just sharing previously created content.
As the number of content curation features continues to grow on social media, it would be intriguing to see how these platforms are used for increased consumer engagement by brands.
