Streaming safely

Playing someone else’s recording on a Twitch or YouTube stream can get the stream muted, the VOD taken down, or the channel a copyright strike. Block Band helps you keep your streams safe.

The built-in songs are safe

Most songs that come with Block Band are public-domain compositions (Beethoven, Grieg, traditional songs…) arranged and recorded for Block Band. Three are recordings released under free licences (CC0 and OGA-BY) by their artists, and three are HibachiiTeriyaki’s own songs, included with her permission. All of them are free to play on stream; Wreckless asks for credit to Umplix, which Copy credit on the song list gives you.

Streamer mode

Turn on Streamer mode in the Block Band menu, on the song list, or in Settings. While it’s on:

• only songs marked stream-safe can be played. Others show Not stream-safe on the song list.
• in a band, you can’t press Ready for a song that isn’t stream-safe. If one starts anyway, you sit it out.
• you won’t hear a nearby band playing a song that isn’t stream-safe, so it doesn’t end up on your stream.

The built-in songs are always stream-safe.

Marking songs as stream-safe

Block Band can’t tell who owns a piece of music, so a song is only stream-safe if whoever added it says so. Any of these marks it:

• A stream-safe.txt file in the songs folder (your own, or a server’s), listing the folder or file names of safe songs, one per line. Lines starting with # are notes.

  # Songs I have the rights to stream
  My Band - Our First Song
  my_tune.nbs

• stream_safe = true in a song’s song.ini, or "streamSafe": true in a song.json.

• The Stream-safe button on the song list, which saves your own choice for that song (in <your game folder>/tgband/stream-safe.json).

Only mark a song stream-safe if you have the rights to stream it. That means your own music, music in the public domain, or music licensed for streaming.

What’s usually safe

• Your own music, or music by people who have given you permission.
• Public-domain compositions in your own arrangement. These are old pieces whose copyright has run out (in the US, music published before 1931; in many other countries it depends on when the composer died). Be careful: a modern recording of an old piece is usually still owned by whoever recorded it. And not every song called “traditional” is old: the famous Wellerman shanty, for example, got its chorus and tune in the 1960s-70s, so it isn’t public domain.
• Music under a free licence that allows streaming, such as Creative Commons CC0 or CC BY. CC BY needs credit (see below).
• “No copyright” music libraries made for creators, such as NoCopyrightSounds (NCS). Check each library’s own rules: most need credit, and some don’t allow every use.

Giving credit

When a track’s licence asks for credit, give it where the library says, usually in your stream or video description. For example, NCS asks streamers to credit the artist and track and to include their link.

Every song in Block Band has a one-line credit. It shows on the song list, for the first few seconds of the song (so it’s on your stream too) and on the results. Copy credit puts it on your clipboard, ready to paste into your stream or video description.

A song’s credit is made from its title, artist and charter, unless you give it the exact wording its licence asks for:

• in a song.ini: credit = Track Name by Artist (example.com), CC BY 4.0, and optionally license = ...
• in a song.json: "credit": "Track Name by Artist (example.com), CC BY 4.0"

None of this is legal advice. If you’re unsure about a song, leave it out of your stream.