In the midst of a competitive relationship with music industry makers and advocates, Twitch aims to reset the clock with The Collective.
According to Amazon's streaming platform, The Collective aims to coach artists to get the most out of live streaming amid what is known as a paradigm shift in music.
According to Music Business Worldwide, the program consists of three different segments: "The Livestream Playbook for Music", "Invitation-only collectives" and "Ongoing support from Twitch". Admission to The Collective is based on Twitch's decision regarding each artist's application.
Those who are accepted receive hands-on assistance from Twitch in a variety of disciplines. First, Twitch's music team will lead the creators through virtual workshops that will explain best practices for building lasting communities and sustainable monetization strategies on the platform.
Second, Twitch will divide its creators into cohorts based on complementary backgrounds, genres, and stages of their careers. According to Twitch, this part of the process is designed to give creators the opportunity to build peer-to-peer connections with their fellow artists and exchange ideas.
Pull out
After going through the program's didactic pieces, Twitch says it will prioritize The Collective graduates for "Discovery, Promotion, and Activation". To do this, the company has brought together a number of attention-grabbing partners including DistroKid, TuneCore, United Masters, Amazon Music, Discord, and Rolling Stone to join the effort.
The Collective is hopefully the beginning of a positive turnaround when it comes to Twitch's relationship with musicians. The platform has been involved in controversy for most of the last year, first over inadequate music licensing agreements and then more recently over leaked documents highlighting the huge gap between streamer and artist compensation on the platform.
Find out more about the collective here.