I noticed this about a month ago annd wanted to learn more and after a few teases the new LFG.TV platform is now live. It’s championed by Todd Terry, David Morales, Mark Knight/Toolroom, Defected, Algoriddim, Technics & InMusic brands.
No takedowns and a better revenue share. The new home for DJ based live streams.
Yup. just signed up and have been in contact with the founder – this one is going to be big.
It’s all a bit shrouded in mystery to me. They don’t seem very forthcoming on how it all works. I’ve seen that people asking for more info are just told to sign up. Get people’s details before telling them everything… hmmmm.
A while ago they did a big promo thing about “Win 1,000 LFG Tokens every month for life”. OK but what’s that worth? When I looked it up it seems they’re almost valueless, although an LFG rep told me it was $10. Oh wow, so $2.50 a week for life? Whoopee!
But it’s not even really $2.50 it’s just tokens. Can we convert them? Do they take a cut?
Everything seems to be based on these tokens rather than actual money, so I guess viewers can buy tokens (what do they cost?) and DJs get paid in tokens.
Despite them promoting it as one big DJ free-for-all, their Terms spell things out differently. Basically if you sign up, they own you. They can do whatever they want with your content, including your voice, your face blah blah, and make money off it. They also say that YOU are responsible for what you upload - all copyright, licensing etc.
“You must obtain all necessary rights, consents, approvals, and licenses for the use and distribution of your content”
It reads to me like you stream at your own risk.
That’s the bit I’d be very wary of. We’re starting to deal with similar issues in my day job, & it’s not pretty!
To be Honest Nick, I never read the Twitch stuff when I signed up. It was recommended to me by other DJs (during COVID) so I just jumped in.
I though Twitch takes a cut from bits too. People buy the bits (Twitch makes money) then when people donate the bits to you, Twitch takes another cut. Unless they changed it recently.
As for the likeness thing, it was always impractical to save VODs (instant copyright strike and mutes) but now under the DJ category it’s blocked anyway, and people can’t take snapshots either, so I don’t see how Twitch could use anything.
Does LFG allow recording/storage of shows?
PK,
Twitch doesn’t take a cut of bits, only subs but then takes about 30% of your total revenue for their music license fee. From what I understand, video recordings require a different license and Twitch, LFG and even Mixcloud don’t permit that.
Twitch definitely takes a cut as they charge more when you buy bits. 100 bits cost $1.40 but donating them only gives the streamer $1.
Yep, but for some reason I thought they took it twice. Apparently it’s only once (when they’re bought). Maybe I was confused because they take some from subs and some from bits.
How are they handling music licensing? The agreement states that anything other than music, the streamer is responsible for. But music seems to have a special carve-out.
What makes me curious is: If the Twitch licensing has exceptions that you can’t play, how come LFG seem to have completely side-stepped that? How did a small fish manage to get blanket permission when the giant that is Amazon failed?
Mixcloud also has a similar audio licensing deal and believe they negotiated with the labels and rights holders directly etc. You can still get DCMA takedowns and there’s some conditions where audio is muted but it should be rarer with the deals they have in place.
The terms and conditions for the LFG usage reflect pretty much what other streaming services state. Anything we do online now have these kinda caveats attached and don’t think it’s a major worry. I think a lot of it means they can promote you to the first page should you get the views and not have to ask. Maybe use you as their marketing in Insta posts etc.
Although I hate this “we own what you do online” mentality, it’s commonplace amongst many providers as a condition of using said service (where the service is free or even paid).
