OBS gives you everything you need to keep copyrighted music from wrecking your channel — most streamers just never change the defaults. The default setup captures all desktop audio on one track, so the moment a song plays anywhere on your PC, it's on your stream, in your VOD, and in every clip. These five changes fix that.
1. Put music on its own source — never inside "Desktop Audio"
Create a dedicated audio source for anything that might play music (a browser, Spotify, a game with licensed tracks) instead of letting it ride the global Desktop Audio. On macOS use a macOS Audio Capture source; on Windows use an Application Audio Capture source pointed at the specific app.
Why it matters: once music is isolated, you can mute just the music — instantly, manually or automatically — without touching your game sound or your mic.
2. Use "Monitor Only (mute output)" for music you play for yourself
Want music in your headphones while you grind, without broadcasting it? Right-click your music source → Advanced Audio Properties → set Audio Monitoring to Monitor Only (mute output). You hear it; your stream doesn't. This one setting removes the most common "I forgot Spotify was on" strike.
3. Bind a mute hotkey to the music source
Settings → Hotkeys → find your music source → bind Mute / Unmute. When something unexpected starts playing, you can kill it without alt-tabbing. It still depends on you noticing in time — that's its weakness.
4. Record your VOD with a separate audio track
On Twitch, enable the Twitch VOD Track (Settings → Output → Streaming) and keep music off that track. Your live stream can have music while your VOD — the thing that gets scanned and muted after the fact — stays clean. For local recordings, use multiple tracks (Settings → Output → Recording) and keep track 1 voice-only.
5. Automate the part you can't babysit
Everything above still relies on you reacting in real time while you're live, focused on your game and your chat. The failure mode is always the same: a song sneaks in — a game cutscene, a video someone sends, an ad — and by the time you notice, it's in the VOD.
That's the gap StreamHush closes: it listens to your audio, recognizes copyrighted songs the moment they play, and mutes that OBS source in about two seconds— then un-mutes when the song ends. It only ever touches the music source, never your mic, and it logs everything it did. Set it once and the whole category of "I didn't notice in time" goes away.
The setup, in one list
- Music isolated on its own OBS source (never global Desktop Audio)
- Personal listening set to Monitor Only (mute output)
- Mute hotkey bound to the music source as a manual backstop
- Twitch VOD track enabled, music kept off it
- StreamHush running for the songs you don't see coming
Related: How to avoid copyright strikes on Twitch · Can you play music on stream?