Photo Credit: Twitch
Most people think of Twitch as a place to stream video games alone. However, Twitch’s music initiative may change that.
The ‘Just Chatting’ category on Twitch is a catch-all for all non-gaming content. It’s also growing five times faster than the most-watched games like League of Legends and Fortnite. Last year at TwitchCon, Twitch announced Twitch Sings, a karaoke game designed from the ground up for the streaming platform.
Now it looks like the Twitch music initiative is expanding with a new Music Partnerships Manager.
Athena Koumis joins Twitch from Spotify, making the announcement yesterday on her social media profiles.
“One thing I’ve learned from working in streaming over the years is a sense of community & meaningful interaction w/ fellow music lovers & music makers. Something that Twitch has built out beautifully through the lens of gaming,” Koumis wrote. “When I learned Twitch was officially expanding into the music space in 2020, I knew this would be the right place for me to continue my work helping music communities thrive.”
Koumis served as Spotify’s North America Editor of Music Culture, where she curated the Fresh Finds playlists and Pride Hub. She later joined Xcite Networks in October 2018. Her LinkedIn profile confirms she joined Twitch last month.
Twitch hopes to attract more non-gamer content creators with the rollout of Twitch Studio. It’s an easy-to-use app designed to help those who are new to streaming.
Twitch owner Amazon wants to maintain Twitch’s platform dominance when it comes to live streaming. Last year, a study conducted in Q3 found that Twitch accounted for 75.6% of all live-streaming hours watched.
There’s definitely a market beyond gaming, and Twitch is aiming to capture it. Twitch is now experiencing its slowest quarterly growth, despite its platform dominance.
Branching out into a global platform for creators seems like the best strategy to maintain growth. Live-streaming games is a very saturated market, and has been for a few years now.