(CelebrityAccess) — Indie digital music partner Merlin announced it has secured a new agreement with video livestreaming platform Twitch to make music from Merlin’s clients available for content spanning the music, gaming, sports, and entertainment space.
The strategic partnership with Merlin will expand direct communications between Merlin members and Twitch, open up dedicated support for those members and their artists to grow their audience bases, and unlock marketing opportunities and revenue streams for artists on labels represented by Merlin.
Accounting for over 15% of the global music market share, Merlin members and their artists represent a panoply of musical genres more than twenty thousand labels and hundreds of thousands of artists from every country in the world.
“We’re thrilled to collaborate with Twitch for this groundbreaking deal,” said Jeremy Sirota, Merlin CEO. “We’ve been engaged in conversations with Twitch since the day I started at Merlin, and I’m pleased that our team found a path for Merlin members and their artists to better engage fan communities across the Twitch ecosystem, whether in music, gaming or beyond. Merlin members are excited to lean into this opportunity on behalf of their artists.”
“It really is an exciting time to be an independent artist,” said Tracy Chan, VP, Head of Music at Twitch. “The relationship between fan and artist has been transformed, and we’re proud to offer a new pathway to success for so many artists. Our partnership with Merlin affords their members’ independent artists an on-ramp to our devoted and engaged Twitch community. We are grateful for the collaborative work of our colleagues at Merlin and know that, together, we can achieve great things for a sector of the music community that has never been more influential.”
The deal is the latest in a series of content agreements between Twitch and major content providers and follows similar agreements both Universal Music Group and Warner Music that highlight the increasing importance of livestreaming to the world of recorded music.
