If you're just starting out in the streaming world, you may be one of those searching for a live-streaming platform to use as a base for your aspiring streamer career. There are many options to choose from, and it's easy to get intimidated while choosing the one that fits your needs. To make your decision easier, we will analyze some of the most popular platforms below!
What is a Live Streaming Platform?
Live-streaming platforms are software, websites, or applications that allow users to broadcast video content to their audience in real time. Depending on your aims, you'll certainly find a platform that works almost perfectly for you, but what do all good streaming services have in common? A decent platform should offer a range of content management features, embedding tools, analytics, video hosting, discoverability, and monetization options. The benefit of having an enormous range of streaming services is that you may find a unique feature combination, particularly for your needs. But be aware that there's no option that suits everyone.
Twitch
It's impossible not to mention Twitch when discussing live-streaming platforms, and you've definitely heard of it! It all started in 2007 when Justin Kan and Emmett Shear launched a general-interest streaming platform Justin.tv. Its gaming category expanded exceptionally fast and eventually became the most prosperous. As a result, the gaming content spun off as Twitch.tv and officially launched in June 2011. Since then, it has become one of the most popular e-sports streaming services, with 140 million unique visitors and almost 9 million active streamers every month.
Twitch allows you to publish live videos and save earlier broadcasts for later replay. It offers the most advanced chat, custom emotes, and many more features that make your streaming experience more comfortable and interactive. Twitch is an excellent way to turn your live stream into capital because it has various monetization methods. Subs, donations, emotes, Twitch/Amazon affiliation, advertisements, and the Twitch Partners Program are always available to monetize your content relatively simply compared to other platforms.
Twitch is one of the first platforms to consider if you're a gamer, but there may be an interest in your content even if you aren't a gamer — the Just Chatting category is in its heyday, and Music, IRL, and Art niches are proliferating too.
Advantages:
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More than 140 million engaged users per month, which is a vast audience
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Variety of monetization methods
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Many opportunities to boost your audience engagement
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Subscription strategy that is simple and effective for long-term income
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Scheduled stream events
Disadvantages:
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The obligation to stream a minimum of hours per month to make an income
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A lot of competition, so it might take a lot of work to be noticed at first
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50 followers minimum to run advertisements
Youtube Gaming
There's no doubt that you're familiar with YouTube, the giant among video-sharing platforms. It's significantly older than Twitch, and gaming content has always held an important place there. However, by the time YouTube Gaming debuted, Twitch had already positioned itself as the dominant player on the market. Nonetheless, YouTube Gaming has achieved success, and it should be noticed! The streaming platform is intuitive and easy to use because it's similar to the good old YouTube site and gives plenty of tools to make a streaming process a cinch. In addition, it generates revenue through ads and partner programs like its big brother YouTube and, of course, allows donations.
Advantages:
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Great support system
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Many creator tools
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Huge audience
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Fantastic at reaching pre-existing followers because whenever you are streaming, your followers get a notification
Disadvantages:
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The threshold for monetization is relatively high
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Making your content stand out can be challenging because of the number of existing creators
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No special rewards for streamers
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Stream management is a bit too complicated
Facebook Gaming
Facebook, like YouTube, is a giant among social media platforms, with almost 3 billion active users monthly and a wide range of demographics. Facebook has made significant investments in gaming past few years, and Facebook Gaming was a serious attempt to gather the whole community in one place. Over 2 billion hours of gaming content were viewed globally in 2022. Unfortunately, there are some alarming signs that the platform may be shut down in the near future — Meta already announced that they are stopping the support of their Facebook Gaming mobile app, and it's definitely not a good sign.
Advantages:
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Simple user interface
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You already have viewers from the friend list when you go live
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Plenty of revenue ways: donations, stars, and monthly fan support
Disadvantages:
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A Facebook account is required to watch streams
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Hard to hold the attention of viewers because they can quickly scroll down to watch something else
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The live streaming audience is significantly smaller compared to Twitch or Youtube
Trovo
Trovo is a Chinese streaming network initially called Madcat and owned by Tencent Games. In terms of style and functionality, it's pretty similar to Twitch. Tencent dominates the gaming sphere in the Chinese market, and it is growing rapidly in the western part of the world, so it may be one of the new Twitch competitors. Still, the efforts to attract an audience abroad have had controversial results, and Trovo is now definitely at its early stage. Another critical thing to consider is that it is heavily used by streamers (and their viewers) from Russia to circumvent sanctions by Twitch, Youtube, and other platforms.
Advantages:
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Relatively easy to get noticed
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Customizable rewards for subscribers
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Tiered partnership program
Disadvantages:
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Small audience
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Lack of creator tools
Tiktok Live
Tiktok Live connects a rich diversity of people and cultures, including creators, different trends, and contrasting communities via its focus on short viral content. It allows artists to be authentic and sincere while sowing a glimpse of their life with a worldwide community in real-time.
Advantages:
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You can invite others to your stream and go live together
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Easy way to be discovered through the "top live" category
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Easy to stream from a computer
Disadvantages:
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Only accounts with 1000 or more followers can go live
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Monetization is available only if you are 18+
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It supports only vertical resolutions to stream, so you can't show your whole game screen while streaming
Instagram live takes 13% of all social media stream visitors, and it's not a small number. Instagram has many ways for live streamers to produce content through Stories, IGTV, and live streams. You can use it as an additional platform to increase the engagement of your profile and lead your followers to your streams on bigger platforms.
Advantages:
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Increases your interaction with followers
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Your followers are notified when you go live
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You can bring guests to your live stream
Disadvantages:
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Only mobile broadcasts
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1-hour stream max
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Stream is available only for 24 hours (but you can save it on your device or IGTV)
Caffeine
Caffeine is positioned as an independent social streaming platform for live competitions and related streams with a community of culture, sports, and music fans. While it has a gaming category, its main focus is on everything else: sports, music, entertainment, and so on.
Advantages:
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No partner program is required to earn money
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Simple to use desktop app for streaming
Disadvantages:
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Small audience
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Gaming streams are not the main focus
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Third-party apps needed for functionality natively supported on other platforms
DLive
DLive is a live game streaming platform that debuted in 2017 and was bought by BitTorrent in 2019. Their mission is to "create a value sharing live streaming platform that empowers creators and viewers through a revolutionary rewards system" via blockchain and no fees.
The UI is quite simple and looks a lot like Twitch, so it's relatively easy to get started. But on the other hand, their monetization system is a bit complicated and requires some understanding of how blockchain works.
Advantages:
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100% of income goes directly to streamers
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Not much competition
Disadvantages:
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Small audience
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Complicated monetization
Discord
Not every broadcaster desires fame and attention; for many gamers, their friends are the only audience that matters. Although Discord is most known for its voice and text chats, you can also broadcast live streams using Discord's screen-sharing functionality. It's a terrific way to run a smaller stream for your pals without worrying about strangers that may butt in.
Advantages:-
Great if you want to interact with viewers on a more personal level
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Stable streaming connection with no glitches
Disadvantages:
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Suitable only for private streams
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Higher screen-sharing quality is accessible only with paid subscription
Steam Broadcasting
A while ago, the top-rated PC gaming service Steam introduced its live-streaming service to help users seamlessly share their gameplay videos. Since then, Steam Broadcasting has been among dozens of competitors in the live-streaming market. This tool allows you to broadcast your gameplay without any extra software! Steam is undoubtedly excellent for newbies to get started because of its simplicity.
Advantages:
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Extremely simple to get started
Disadvantages:
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Lack of customization
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It isn't as featured-packed as live-streaming on other services
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It doesn't save your streams – there's no option to preserve them at all
Wrapping it up
There is no question that live streaming can offer an exciting viewing experience for your audience. Choosing the right platform for this task is complicated, so you need to consider each variant's pros and cons. Always consider your specific requirements, be bold and try new options, and remember that if you can't decide, there's always multistreaming!
