6 Live Streaming Platform Innovations You Should Know

Musical artists are spending unprecedented amounts of time live streaming their content due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s social distancing guidelines. As a result, we’re seeing social networking platforms expand their feature sets to improve the live streaming experience for fans and artists alike. 

Here’s a look at some of the newer apps and features that have been developed recently that will help musicians and other performers expand their audience reach and monetize their live streaming content. 

Facebook Venue

Facebook’s new “Venue” app delivers an interactive second-screen experience for live stream and TV broadcast viewers, enabling them to use their mobile devices to connect with fellow fans focused on important “moments” from the broadcast, with interactive polls, questions and chats available for each curated moment. The app is available for both IoS and Android platforms, and is ideal for sporting events as well as music experiences. As 94% of people keep a smartphone near them while watching TV, the app provides a convenient and immediate way to connect with live content audiences and producers on a deeper level in real-time creating a collaborative and participatory experience that viewers deeply desire now more than ever.

Instagram Stories

Thousands of indie performers all the way up to big acts like John Legend, The Weeknd and Questlove have used Instagram Stories to perform live streamed concerts from their homes or from small venues, where fans can comment and share feedback with the artist in real time. Between February and March, when many parts of the country began to lock down, the platform saw a 70% increase in viewership. 

Live streamed concerts have become such a big part of the Instagram experience that the platform is making some updates to improve the experience for artists and their fans: While Instagram has long had a one-hour time limit, it’s in the process of extending the time duration so that artists can host longer performances. Instagram’s also in the process of rolling out a simulcast feature that lets users broadcast their stories in real-time to Facebook, greatly expanding their potential reach. (Previously, you could upload an Instagram video to share on Facebook, but only after the broadcast had finished.) 

Instagram’s also offering more monetization opportunities: In a new pilot program, Instagram is introducing sponsorship “badges,” in which a fan can pay anywhere from $0.99 to $4.99 to have a colored badge associated with their comments during a specific Instagram Story. This might, for example, ensure that the artist responds to the fans with top sponsorship levels in Q&As, or perform their song requests.  Perhaps most significant: as of yesterday Instagram is enabling musicians to sell merchandise.

Facebook Live

Facebook Live has also seen a massive increase in audience for live streamed content since the pandemic began: audience numbers were up by over 50% from February to March, with over 8.5 billion live streams broadcast on the platform since the product’s 2015 launch. 

Facebook Stars is a rewards program originally launched for gamers in 2019, but it’s since been rolled out to musicians and other creators too. In the program, users can purchase digital gifts (“Stars”) that they can dole out like tips to gamers or musical artists during live streams. (Each Star is worth one cent.)

Facebook is also in the process of offering paid virtual concerts, in which music fans need to purchase a ticket in advance to view the live stream, similar to smaller ticketed platforms like StageIt. 

TikTok

TikTok is best known for its 15-second dance and music videos, but the platform has been working on diversifying into a multitude of content offerings, including cooking, beauty, and fashion videos. Content creators with a minimum of 1,000 followers have the ability to live stream on the platform. Audience members who view your live stream can also send you digital gifts. TikTok may be an ideal platform to engage for artists with younger fans: The app has over 800 million active users, and 41 percent of them are between ages 16 and 24.  Recently TikTok live streamed the Small Business Live festival in a partnership with Superfly Presents that featured iconic artists performing in small businesses that were important to them to help raise funds and awareness to help business owners that had been adversely affected by COVID-19.  The experience raised nearly $1M and garnered 9.9M views across all platforms and was live hosted by DJ Jazzy Jeff, Naomi Ekperigin and TikTok influencers.  On June 30 Jennifer Lopez live streamed the NYC Highschool virtual graduation on her TikTok account.

Twitch

Twitch is widely known as the largest gaming live stream platform in the world, but recently, the company has also been looking to expand into DJs and music performances. Musicians such as Diplo regularly broadcast live performances on the platform, and labels including Def Jam and Columbia Records have launched their own Twitch channels where their artists can broadcast. Although musicians don’t currently have the visibility on Twitch that they do on a music-focused platform such as Instagram Live, the platform offers other benefits: Broadcast length on Twitch is unlimited, and Twitch allows artists to customize their feed display. Better yet, on Twitch, users can stream themselves as they dance or sing along to the show. 

There are several ways to earn money from live streams on Twitch. You can integrate payment tools into your account, such as Limepay, Donorbox, or PayPal. Your fans can also buy “Bits,” which allow them to tip you with small donations during the course of a live stream.

In April 2020 Twitch delivered 27 million hours of live streamed music content and that trend is expected to continue.

Mixcloud Live

The digital audio streaming service Mixcloud has just launched their own live streaming offering, Mixcloud Live, which enables DJs to broadcast live audio and visual content and engage with viewers on their feed. Overall, the functionality is similar to any number of other live streaming services, but there’s one important distinction: Mixcloud has licensing agreements with most major music publishers. That means that DJs who live stream performances on the platform are able to do so without risk of takedown notices, and can generate revenue for the artists whose work they use.

Fans and artists also continue to use the YouTube platform due to its robust audio and video quality and overall ease of use.

We can expect to see more innovation in the live music streaming space as tours remain suspended and artists and their teams focus their creativity on how to create unique live experiences across these and other platforms.