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Business News Deals Digital Labels & Publishers
Twitch announces Merlin deal
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 3 February 2022
The Twitch deals are now all falling into place, with Merlin the latest to announce a “dynamic new agreement” with the Amazon owned livestreaming platform.
The indie label repping digital rights agency says that its new deal with Twitch “recognises the power of independent artists and their impact in the Twitch community, creates revenue earning opportunities for Merlin members and their artists, and leans into Twitch’s increased focus on music-centric programming”.
“We’re THRILLED to collaborate with Twitch for this groundbreaking deal”, Merlin chief Jeremy Sirota adds. “We’ve been engaged in conversations with Twitch since the day I started at Merlin, and I’m pleased that our team found a path for Merlin members and their artists to better engage fan communities across the Twitch ecosystem, whether in music, gaming or beyond. Merlin members are excited to lean into this opportunity on behalf of their artists”.
Meanwhile Twitch music boss Tracy Chan says: “It really is an exciting time to be an independent artist. The relationship between fan and artist has been transformed, and we’re proud to offer a new pathway to success for so many artists. Our partnership with Merlin affords their members’ independent artists an on-ramp to our devoted and engaged Twitch community. We are grateful for the collaborative work of our colleagues at Merlin and know that, together, we can achieve great things for a sector of the music community that has never been more influential”.
Of course, Twitch found itself towards the top of the music industry’s diss list for a while after it started proactively courting creators beyond its original community of gamers, including musicians, despite not having many music licences in place beyond deals with the US song right collecting societies.
However, some indie distributors announced partnerships, while talks were going on behind the scenes with the bigger licensing entities, including the majors and Merlin. Both Warner Music and Universal Music have also announced their own Twitchy deals in recent months.
Specifics of these partnerships aren’t especially clear, though – among other things – they facilitate the creation of label and artist channels on the Twitch platform, as well as making it easier for rights owners to get unapproved use of their music by creators on the service taken down.
