Have you ever been hit with a copyright strike on Twitch over the music you were playing on your stream?

Even if you haven't been there personally, you've probably heard the discussions that have been floating around for over a year now. Recently, a developer has come up with a clever workaround for gamers who want to play copyrighted music while they stream.

The SpotifySynchronizer extension, created by Twitch developer Peter Frydenlund Madsen (AKA Peueno0) does pretty much exactly as its name suggestions: it synchs the Spotify tracks of a streamer who's playing a particular game with the Spotify account of the people watching that stream. The result is that the viewers can n ow listen to the same music played by their favorite streamers, without any copyrighted tracks being streamed without an artist or record label's permission.

It's a brilliant workaround, honestly - and in an interview with TorrentFreak, the dev explained that he got the idea from watching some Grand Theft Auto streams. This game in particular had suffered a deluge of DCMA notices lately, and Pequeno0 decided to utilize Spotify's developer tools in order to set up his extension. You can check out the full interview here.

So, how does it work?

If a streamer wants to play a certain set of tunes in the background of their gameplay (or art stream, hobby stream, what have you), then they can hook up their personal Spotify account to the extension, which will show off which song is currently playing on loop. Anyone who is watching the stream can open the extension, which directs them to their own Spotify account, and will then play the exact same music currently playing on the streamer's account. Because Spotify is the one playing the song on both ends, that means the artists are still getting paid.

The system has some hiccups, but is a fairly great solution to what has been a persistent problem in the streaming community. Pequeno0 said that it was difficult to get Twitch and Spotify's respective APIs to work well together, resulting in the need to make the extension into a popup window rather than an embedded tool. Also, if a streamer chooses to switch a track mid-song, a viewer might need to "force" their Spotify account to synch in order to keep up with that change.

I enjoy discovering new music, and sampling the musical tastes of some of my favorite streamers is a great way to expand my horizons. What about you - what do you think of this new extension, is it something you'd utilize? Share your thoughts with me!