— Twitch Sings (@TwitchSings) September 4, 2020 The feature was really more of a game — a Rock Band-ish game, to be precise. If you’ve never played it, essentially the streamer would sing along to a song of choice, and their viewers could request certain songs or challenges and cheer the streamer on. While Twitch Sings hasn’t exactly been the site’s biggest draw, I did see streamers doing it as a novelty on community nights and for charity streams. Twitch has made several overtures to non-gaming content, with Twitch Sings being the biggest push. Several streamers voiced their dismay in the replies to the above tweet. According to Twitch’s announcement, the company will begin the shutdown on December 1 by removing Twitch Sings videos and clips “per our contractual obligations,” whatever that means. The company also said it’ll be releasing its backlog of over 400 songs, so that anyone who wants to enjoy Twitch Sings at some point over the next few months can sing whatever they please from Twitch’s old catalog. It could be that streamers are singing songs that might be vulnerable to DMCA takedowns, which have become a persistent problem for streamers. Playing copyrighted music can get streamers slapped with a temporary ban, or some of their clips containing said music can be removed. In June, Twitch was hit with a mass DMCA claim for two years’ worth of clips, though it didn’t say whether any of the clips were from Twitch Sings. I would think karaoke would fall under fair use, but what do I know?
— Twitch Support (@TwitchSupport) June 8, 2020 Twitch Sings will stop working completely on January 1.
