Back in April of 2011, YouTube launched YouTube Live, which offered live streaming capabilities to a select number of partners. Today, they’re announcing a massive expansion of the program which will allow tons of new channels to live stream content as they wish.
Starting today, all YouTube channels in good standing (you know, following the YouTube Community Guidelines) with over 1,000 subscribers are eligible for live streaming. If you want to know if you are eligible, simply check your account features page. If you’re eligible, you’ll see an “enable” button and there you’ll be able to sign up. YouTube says that live streaming capabilities will officially come to these channels in the following weeks.
Here’s what YouTube has to say about what content creators will get with the YouTube Live expansion:
YouTube Live allows you to offer your audience a great viewing experience, with great streaming quality and instant scalability and reliability. Here are some key features:
- You get real-time transcoding in the cloud, so you only need to send us your highest quality stream and we make it instantly available in all resolutions and device formats
- You can show multiple camera angles, add closed captions, and insert ads and slates
- Viewers can watch the live stream from any device, get the best quality constantly adjusting to their Internet connection, and can skip back and forth in the live stream
Last month, YouTube for iOS finally got live streaming. And last week, YouTube pulled the curtain back on their long-rumored paid channels. Only a few select partners currently have access to those paid channels at launch, but in the future you can see how expanded live streaming and paid channel subscriptions could prove an interesting match.
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