Twitch Mutes Metallica’s Livestream Performance at BlizzCon Video Game Conference

As part of the annual video game conference BlizzCon, Metallica were tapped for a livestream performance at the event. It was the first time the band had played the conference since 2014 and it was memorable for all the wrong reasons. A few seconds into the Twitch stream of the event, the metal faded out and was replaced by computerized folk music instead, to the ire of viewers.

In recent years, Twitch has cracked down on the use of copyrighted audio on its platform under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The impact on content creators has been immense, with some accounts being locked or banned entirely for the use of music they did not own the rights for.

As Metallica began playing the Ride the Lightning track “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” Twitch silenced the performance, and instead swapped the metal titan’s classic track for something copyright free, cartoonish and, ultimately, rather slapstick, despite the overwhelming commonalities present in metal and video game soundtracks.

Viewers quickly flocked to Twitter to express their outrage, while also pointing the finger at Twitch for the shortcoming, now having felt the wrath of their own restrictions first hand.

Others referenced Metallica’s 2000 battle with the music pirating platform Napster when commenting that the band, too, have a notorious history regarding copyright enforcement. “Metallica placed themselves front and center in the copyright debacle. This couldn’t have happened to a more deserving band,” wrote one user, seen below.

View some of the responses below, which has embedded some clips from the snafu. A 37-second video at the bottom of the page also captured the fade out from Metallica and into the copyright free music.