The state of music streaming in 2021 – Metallica was performing at BlizzCon yesterday, which was an all-virtual event streamed on the Twitch gaming channel – and Twitch eventually faded out the performance out of DMCA copyright strike fears.
The news was first reporting by e-sports analyst Rod "Slasher" Breslau, who himself was afraid to post the full clip, out of fear of getting his own copyright strike:
A longer version was posted by another user as well at the Finnish e-sports site SuomiVeikkaus.com. Moments into performing "For Whom The Bell Tolls," the audio is faded for some 8-bit folk music.
Twitch's dealings with DMCA copyrights have been heavily criticized by users. A few months ago, Dragonforce guitarist Herman Li got his channel temporarily removed for playing songs from his own band.
A full version of the performance not being cut off made its way to Youtube. Some fans pointed out the irony that DMCA laws and copyright laws are currently what they are because of Metallica's fight with Napster 20 years ago. We still ultimately believe Metallica had a point at the time, they just perhaps went about it the wrong way.
