What to do with a DMCA claim on my Livestream?

So… you just logged into Twitch/YouTube and see a notification of a copyright claim…

Don’t panic, stay calm.  

First off, what music were you playing at the timestamp of the claim?  If you’re playing an artist who claims to release DMCA free music, make sure to contact them with details the claimant provides; who made the claim, song (if any), etc.  A screenshot will do the trick!

If you’re playing BeatsBackground when the claim was made, please contact us here and we’’ll look into it.

Unfortunately, even though our music is DMCA free, sometimes algorithms will detect similar melodies and raise a false claim.  Other times, people will steal our music, adjust the speed/pitch, and upload it as their own.  

In fact, this happened to us just the other day.  A streamer who uses our music, got a claim from a distribution company by YouTube.  Upon further examination, we realized an artist (name redacted) stole five of our songs; slowed them down and uploaded it as their own!  The best part?  The names of the songs were literally the opposite of what we named ours.

Once the streamer brought this to our attention, we reached out to YouTube and plead our case.  YouTube politely explained they couldn’t do anything because the artist said they owned the music and had permission to upload.  We ended up reaching out to the distribution company who uploaded the stolen music without knowing and explained that the music was in fact ripped from a BeatsBackground album.

We provided our BMI copyright numbers and the original names of the songs.  Thankfully, the distribution company was compliant after realizing we were in fact the actual copyright holders.  The stolen music has since been removed from all streaming platforms (a win for us) and a big win for the streamer who had the copyright claim removed!  Now they can continue to monetize their videos.

We will never make a copyright claim on streamers who use our music, it’s not even in the content ID algorithm’s for that reason alone.  Our goal is to see you win.  We hope this gives you more assurance in using BeatsBackground in your livestream!  Stream in peace.

- BeatsBackground