Where to Stream
Table of Contents
- Summary
- Where to Stream?
- The Case Against Multistreaming
- Thoughts on Short-form Content and Going Viral
This section features a lot of my personal biases on streaming and streaming platforms as I feel like it’s extremely hard to talk about or recommend some platforms without context.
Summary
Where you stream will have an impact on your audience, engagement, growth potential, and various other factors. In this section, I will highlight some of the pros and cons of streaming platforms based on what other creators have said and express some of my personal opinions as a viewer.
Where to Stream?
YouTube
Pros
YouTube’s revenue split is 70% across the board (for both memberships and super chats), which makes it a lot easier to calculate how much money you’re making. In comparison, Twitch has different percentages for bits, bits via extensions, and subscriptions based on which tier you’re at. You can find out more about YouTube monetization here.
Cons
It is a lot harder to get monetized on YouTube than it is on Twitch, even with the new lower expanded YouTube Partner Program. For reference, to qualify for monetization on YouTube, you will need 500 subscribers and 3,000 watch hours within the last year. For Twitch, you only need 50 followers, have streamed 8 hours, and have an average of 3 viewers.
Twitch
Pros
While YouTube may seem like the better option due to its larger user base, Twitch may have a larger audience base for gaming content. I’ve also heard many people say that discoverability is often much easier on Twitch than YouTube, meaning you will often get more viewers and followers simply from streaming on Twitch.
Additionally, as stated above, Twitch’s Affiliate Program has a much lower threshold to qualify than YouTube’s Partner Program, so it is easier to qualify for monetization. You can find out more about monetization here.
Cons
However, it’s not all fun and games over at Twitch. Twitch streams tend to be more rowdy and while that might be seen as a good thing for engaging your audience, it can come with a price. When popular streamer Jerma transitioned from streaming on YouTube to Twitch in 2021, there was a noticable increase in transphobia and hateful messages.
Thoughts on Kick
Above, I noted some considerations for streaming on Twitch, namely the increased transphobia and hate speech compared to YouTube. However, neither of them compare to Kick.
Kick.com is a platform that not only houses dangerous content and content creators but also seems to encourage it. Kick has exclusivity contracts with large controversial streamers such as the transphobic Adin Ross who has streamed pornography, offered his viewers money to perform acts of violence, and told other streamers and his viewers to unalive themselves.
Kick also launched without a “Report” button and only added one because of an infamous stream where streamer Ice Poseidon filmed an escort using hidden cameras.
Most recently, there has been an increase of dangerous content on the website that even Adin Ross thinks is going too far. In April 2024, another prolific Kick streamer, N3on, livestreamed himself and a street racer speeding through traffic and causing a hit-and-run, only to receive a 1-day ban.
I would consider you think long and hard about what kind of community you want to foster and whether or not those align with the values of Kick streamers and their viewers.
The Case Against Multistreaming
The video above talks about some of the pros and cons of multistreaming/simulstreaming. The main takeaways is that, as a new streaming, maintaining and growing on 1 platform is hard enough. You should focus on growing you main audience rather than stretching yourself too thin.
And I agree. From personal experience, as a viewer, simulstreams are fun to watch but often only if you’re a Twitch user. Due to Twitch’s simulcasting guidelines, anyone who streams on Twitch is required to prioritize their Twitch chat and experience. This results in viewers on YouTube and other platforms feeling like an afterthought and it shows not only in the view count but also in the engagement. In my journey to find more indie VTubers to watch, I have been in countless streams on YouTube where there is 1 viewer, only to find that there are streaming on Twitch to 50 viewers. Often times, their YouTube livestream chats have only 1 message for the entire stream: “can you see this?”
As someone who watched VTubers almost exclusively on YouTube, my advice is that of the video’s: if you are getting 100 viewers on Twitch and 2 viewers on YouTube, focus your efforts on growing on Twitch; you’re not really enticing your YouTube viewers to subscribe anyways.
Thoughts on Short-form Content and Going Viral
Less-related to where to stream but more about focusing on the content you would like to create–unless you’re planning on specifically making short-form content on YouTube or TikTok, it seems like most users who find your content through shorts are exclusively interested in shorts. In the clip above, former idolEN VTuber Rin Penrose, talks in-depth about their experience with going viral via YouTube shorts and how that has impacted her, her viewership, and growth. I’ve also unfortunately seen this phenomenon occur to a number of indie VTubers first-hand, where their subscription count blew up due to a viral short but did not see significant growth or consistent viewship during livestreams.