The Number 1 Danger for a Stream Account is the DMCA Bans.
Why? Because these Bans may terminate your streaming account For EVER!.
Twitch says that it will terminate your account after 3 strikes (you will find the warning under any video you have store in Content Tab > Video Producer of Dashboard) and Youtube says for 3 strikes too but in a period of 90 days (More..) . It is unclear if the period extends the total number of DMCA strikes but personally i don't want to learn more about this subject and the same i am suggesting to you. Best Advice on subjects like these is always: "avoid attracting bad attention to yourself for nothing".
I don't want to search but i am sure every streaming platform has or will have in the future similar policies because the pressure comes from DMCA and nobody even the big corporations will risk to have problems because the thousands of streamers exist today want to play a song or songs during their streams.
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This is how it looks the DMCA warnings on Twitch.
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So, the risk to totally lose your account exists and is big but if you still want to play a song that you know it can be the reason for a strike at least you can make a trick that will not store the song to your Vods.
Q: Why songs on the VODS are problem?
A: Because VODS are there waiting for someone to play them and they're the living evidence that you used copyright music!
The method i am representing is using the OBS as streaming software and the 26.1.1 version (i hope XSplit has something similar) and i am taking as fact that you already have installed OBS and is working to your system. The Trick is to send the sound to the vod from the song to a destination that is not the main audio track of Live OBS.
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| OBS Advanced Audio Properties |
In OBS there is an Advanced Audio Properties option under Edit tab (see above picture) and if you press it it will show you all the available audio sources, their available settings and 6 tracks for each Scene we have (2nd image below). The 6 tracks is the key option that we will change since every track is enabled by default and we will assign the 6th track column as the column that is responsible for our VODS* and only.
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Only 6th track column for VODS
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These 6 tracks are the same 6 tracks which are under your streaming tab in Output (Settings > Output > You choose Advanced in Output Mode > Streaming > Twitch VOD Track ) and we choose the 6th Track as you see in the picture above because it is in the opposite position from the 1st that is the main track to avoid to make mistake and chose the same track for both Lives and Vods. you can choose the 2nd track and it will have the same result. the key point is to not use the same track for both (this rule applies borh for Lives and VODs)
So, this way any source (literally any source as you can see in the picture below ) we don't want to be heard it can be excluded from our VODs ( the 6th track in our example). The source we don't want be captured in our VODs will be heard in our Lives but not in VODS. So, in this example below if we use the famous intro from Star Wars we will exluded it from our VODs and DMCA can't flag it as strike.
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This is how it looks a DMCA RED FLAG SOURCE Excluded from Stream.
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Also, If we want our Music to not be heard in Lives too, we just untick the source of the song or songs from the track number we have assign for the Live and nobody will listen the copyrighted songs during our Lives except us!
And If you are afraid that this method is not working correct you can test the separated audio track with Recording Option. It is exactly the same!
Statistically speaking i have seen many mutes to VODS (in twitch it is the part of the video which the song has different color as you can see in the first image) and none in Lives (Real Time) and the majority of mutes are on streamers that used English speaking music but lately i saw mutes in vods in my nature language that is Greek and in small streamers. This is why it is so important to separate at the beginning and as small streamer the VOD audio or Better for the Lives if you don't really want to share with your viewers the song you hear during the livestream. The sources that may play copyright music are all these that we can choose as source in OBS like mp3/mp4 players, our browsers and even another stream!
*How-to Enable Vods in Youtube and Twitch ?
In YouTube If your live stream is less than 12 hours, YouTube can automatically archive it for you and if you want to delete it, go to Youtube Studio > Content > Live (tab) and Visibility and then delete the archived video . more than 12 hours video is not archived at all).
In Twitch is disabled by default the creation of the vods of our streams. you can enable it from dashboard > Settings > Stream > VOD Settings and we tick the store past broadcasts.
