Twitch for Musicians Second Edition. Karen Allen
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people are paying attention and interacting with you. Engagement is what you’re really after, anyway. Engagement creates fans. Engagement is what creates value for fans and fans return that value with tips, subscriptions, merchandise purchases, Spotify listens, newsletter signups, concert ticket sales, etc.
HOW LIVESTREAM CONTENT IS COMPLEMENTARY TO ALL OTHER CONTENT YOU CREATE
Since the content you’re creating when livestreaming is different from what you create and how you interact with your followers on other platforms, it’s not competitive. In fact, it all works together.
Stay on Facebook. Stay on Soundcloud. Stay on Instagram. Keep doing what you’re already doing. Add livestreaming to it.
Your livestream will be the easiest content you create all week. You just go live and start playing music and talking with fans. That’s it. When you’re done, pull the best moments, make them into short clips that do well on social networks, and use them as posts to promote your next livestream. Pull some screenshots of funny moments out of your chat and use them for your Twitter. Show your audience on your socials how much fun you’re having livestreaming.
Similarly, go on your socials before you go live on Twitch and ask your followers to come watch. Do a quick Instagram story as you’re setting up. Talk about your socials during your stream and encourage viewers to join so you can communicate with them in between streams.
You can promote everything else you’ve got going on to your audience on Twitch. Encourage your Twitch viewers to pre-save the next song you have coming out on Spotify. Tell them about your crowdfunding campaign and the perks of joining your Patreon. Post links on your Channel Page to your merch and your tour dates.
Because the type of content and level of engagement on Twitch is so different from everything else, it’s not going to cannibalize anything you’re doing on your socials, and it’s not going to be redundant to your social posts, either. Livestreaming is where you’re going to go a level deeper with your followers and make them passionate fans instead of casual ones. Your socials are where you’re going to stay top of mind with your Twitch viewers in between streams and promote your channel to everyone else. It all works together.
Chapter 2: Anatomy of a Stream
To really understand Twitch, you have to go on Twitch, so let’s do that in this section.
I’ll explain all the components of a Channel Page and a livestream briefly and we’ll get into details on how to set your channel up in the following chapters.
THE THREE STREAMER LEVELS
One key thing to know beforehand is that there are three user levels on Twitch.
1 Basic (everyone)Every Twitch user starts out here. At the basic level as a streamer, you get all the features that Twitch provides that are not attached to monetization. So, you can stream video, use the chat, be followed by viewers, and archive your streams. As a viewer, you can watch, chat, subscribe, and buy virtual currency (Bits) to spend on gifts for the streamers. Streamers can still accept donations from viewers at the Basic level, but they have to use third-party (off-Twitch) streamer services to process the payments. We discuss how to set those up later.
2 Affiliate (streamers)Affiliate is the first level of being able to earn revenue from Twitch as a streamer. You can run ads on your channel and viewers can subscribe to your channel and spend Bits on virtual goods during your stream. You have to hit certain viewership benchmarks before becoming an Affiliate. Affiliates get a share of the revenue from ads run during the stream and that viewers spend in their channel.
3 Partner (streamers)Partner is much like Affiliate but the benchmarks to become Partner are higher. When Partnered, streamers can do all an Affiliate can plus offer more features to viewers and be eligible for promotional support from Twitch.
Technically, every Twitch user has a Channel Page and can stream. Though there is no designation between users on Twitch, in this book I’ll refer to those who stream as creators or streamers and those who watch as viewers.
THE CHANNEL PAGE
The Channel Page functions much like a profile page on social media. It’s the channel owner’s home base where people watch the streams, chat, watch archives of past streams, and learn more about the streamer. Everyone has a Channel Page, even if all you do is view streams.
The Channel Page consists of a Video Player, Panels below that with information uploaded by the channel owner, a Chat Window to the right that is always active, and navigation across the top so viewers can watch archived videos.
Channel Page Navigation
Your Channel Page navigation looks like this.
The channel name is your Twitch username and clicking on it or on Home takes you to the main Channel Page with the Video Player and Panels and Chat Window. Videos and Clips are the next most commonly used pages and are where on-demand videos of past streams are stored. Followers is a list of who is following the channel. The heart and bell to the right are where viewers follow you (heart) and set their notifications (bell). Subscribe is where viewers can subscribe, re-subscribe, etc.
Channel Name and Avatar
Your channel name is your username. You can customize the capitalization of your username or change it completely in your Account Profile under Settings. The avatar image next to it is customizable.
Videos
Twitch can archive your past streams in the Videos section of your Channel Page so that viewers can watch them on demand. Very few viewers watch entire past streams and the files are huge, so the archives are only up 14 or 60 days after you went live, depending on whether you are Partnered. You can opt to not archive your streams and can delete them once they are up.
You can upload videos to your Videos page or make Clips (up to 60 seconds) or Highlights (longer) from past streams using Twitch’s video editing tools and post them here. You can also organize them into Collections (“New Songs,” “Music Videos”), sort of like YouTube. Those videos don’t expire. Users can filter what they see on this page by using a drop-down tool.
Clips
Viewers and you can create clips of your stream, which are snippets up to 60 seconds, and give them custom titles and share them to socials. Clips are usually songs or funny moments from the stream. When they are shared to socials, only a screenshot and the link to the clip on Twitch is shared, the video itself is not embedded in the post. The Videos section of your Channel Page will have Popular Clips listed. The Clips section lists all clips.
To create a clip, the viewer would mouse over your video (on a phone they would click the video) then click the director’s clapboard icon. They can do this with a live or archived video. A page will open that lets them edit a clip from that point up to 60 seconds prior and create a title for the clip.