How to Play Music on Twitch

This article explains how to play music on Twitch, including what music is safe and what music will face copyright issues (and get you into trouble).

How Do I Play Music on My Twitch Stream?

There are a lot of ways to play background music on a Twitch stream. If your stream is configured to broadcast the same audio output you hear through your headphones, then you can just load up a YouTube video or a music player like Spotify, play a song, and it will play on your stream. If you’re streaming from a console, then you can do the same thing by launching an app like Spotify on the console, playing a song, and then returning to your game.

If you use broadcasting software like OBS, you can also an app like Spotify as a source and then adding that to your OBS scene. This works a lot like adding a game to OBS, but you can overlay your game with a Spotify mini-player if you like.

Here's how to add Spotify to your Twitch stream in OBS:

1. Click the + in the Sources section of OBS.

2. Click Window Capture.

3. Change the name of the window to Spotify, or something else you will remember, and click OK.
   

   If you don't want the Spotify window to be visible on your stream, deselect the make source visible box.

4. Click the Window source selection box, and select Spotify.exe.

   If you don't see Spotify as an option, make sure the Spotify app is running on your computer.

5. Click and drag the red outline to resize the Spotify window.

6. Press and hold Alt, then click and drag the Spotify window outline to crop it.

7. When you've cropped the Spotify window to your liking, click your mouse to release it.

8. Click and drag the Spotify window anywhere you like on the screen, and you're ready to go.

   The window was cropped to show only the currently playing song in this example, but you can crop to show the controls as well, the current playlist, or any other part of the Spotify window.

Can You Play Spotify While Streaming on Twitch?

You can play Spotify while streaming on Twitch, but you have to be careful about which songs you play. The same is true for Apple Music, YouTube Music, other streaming services, and even songs you’ve bought from places like iTunes. While you can play music from all of those sources on Twitch, you can’t legally play music you don’t have the permission to.

Can You Play Copyrighted Music on Twitch?

You can only play copyrighted music on Twitch if you own the copyright, if you’ve paid for the rights to stream the music, or if the copyright owner has given explicit streaming permission either to streamers in general or you in particular.

If you play copyrighted music on Twitch you don’t have the rights to, you will run afoul of both Twitch’s terms of service and copyright law. That means you could face repercussions from Twitch, and you could also be open to legal action by the copyright owner.

Can You Get Banned From Twitch for Playing Music?

You can get banned from Twitch if you play copyrighted music and you get caught. Twitch can change their terms of service at any time, but they will typically issue a few warnings followed by a permanent ban from the service. There is no procedure for erasing old warnings either, so if you’ve already received several warnings years ago, you could be banned immediately if you streamed copyrighted music today.

What Music Can You Stream on Twitch?

You can stream music you personally own the rights to, music in the public domain, and music that has been made available for streaming by the copyright holders. It can be difficult for a streamer to determine exactly what’s okay and what isn’t, but there are a lot of sources that have done that work for you.

Here are some good places to get music to stream on Twitch:

• Twitch. Soundtrack, formerly the Twitch Music Library, is a source directly from Twitch that provides access to a bunch of music that you can stream without worrying about copyright strikes.
• Royalty-free libraries. You can pay to use royalty-free libraries like Envato Elements and Epidemic Sound. These libraries were traditionally for video producers, but they have subscriptions that are aimed at streamers. 
• Plugins and apps. Apps and plugins like Pretzel and Soundstripe make it easy to add royalty-free music to your streams. Some of these are free or have a free tier, but you typically have to pay a monthly fee.
• Twitch playlists. Services like YouTube and Spotify have playlists full of music that’s safe to play on Twitch. Just search Twitch FM on Spotify or Music for Twitch on YouTube. These aren’t as safe as the other methods though, so make sure to check for copyrighted content before you start playing one of these playlists.