There’s a big figure in the start-of-the-year blog post from Twitch’s chief product officer Tom Verrilli and chief monetization officer Mike Minton. “Streamers earned over $1 billion across Twitch in 2022,” they wrote.
That’s a mixture of channel subscriptions, tips and shared advertising revenues, although the blog post didn’t break down the overall figure into those categories. Instead, it focused on summarising the various tools and programs that Twitch launched last year to help streamers to make money.
It also looks ahead to what’s coming in 2023, including new features for viewers to pay their favourite broadcasters; a big push to help those streamers run sponsorships on their channels; tools to turn Twitch streams into “vertical, short-form video formats” to promote elsewhere; and improvements in analytics, advertising and community management tools.
It’s all good news for the growing number of musicians and music companies who are using Twitch. The hype around the platform has died down a little bit in our industry, partly because we’ve realised that it’s not a quick-bucks platform. Doing Twitch well requires hard work: commitment to regular broadcasts and interaction with viewers.
Past rumblings from rightsholders about Twitch’s licensing status may have had an impact too, but as the pressure has focused to TikTok and its next set of licensing deals, Twitch has found agreements (partnerships, if not platform-wide licensing deals) with entities ranging from the NMPA to WMG, UMG and Merlin.
Meanwhile, its sister company Amazon Music has made Twitch a growing part of its own artist partnerships, from concert livestreams to TV-style formats.
Bar a new feature “turning off echo cancellation for musical guests” Verrilli and Minton didn’t have any other 2023 plans for music in their blog post, but there is plenty of scope for its utility for musicians (and its partnerships with rightsholders) to broaden and deepen this year.
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