StreamBop

Streaming is now more popular than ever, and with the influx of aspiring streamers looking to get into the field, there are a few caveats to keep note of before hitting that Start Streaming button. One such caveat pertains to copyright: namely, playing copyrighted music on your stream can hamper your revenue, and — in some worse cases — even shut down your channel for a period of time.

We all know of copyright-free music playlists and the like, and for the most part, they make for a quite good middle-ground. StreamBop exists to make work easier in that regard: it automatically plays non-copyrighted tunes on your stream, all while crediting the artists through a non-intrusive overlay.

The developer provides some thorough guidelines on how to set up the software, so the whole process should be worry-free for most. Launch the program, click Start Music, and a window will open — this window is to be used as the overlay. Open OBS — or your streaming software of choice — and create a Window Capture under the Sources tab, selecting the StreamBop Viewer.

Afterwards, you'll have to add a green screen filter through your streaming program for the overlay to work. In OBS, this is done by right-clicking the Window Capture instance, and heading over to Filters. There, you'll be able to add a Chroma Key: change the Key Color Type option to Magenta, and you're set. You can then click Start in the Streaming Panel, and that's all.

The tool automatically plays non-copyrighted music for your streams, and the overlay serves to properly credit the artists. This overlay can be changed in the Customizer menu: three themes are available, and disabling the Currently Playing animations is also possible, as well as the overlay's orientation.

Aside from that, the control panel provides a quick and easy way for users to manage their system and music volumes via the Mixer. The tool is overall quite easy to utilize, and the music it plays is quite alright, too.

StreamBop is a worthwhile solution for streamers looking to not run into copyright troubles: you never really know whether what you play is truly copyright-free, so such a tool is most useful and needed.