DJ Livestreams: The Best Platforms To Boost Your Income During Lockdown
As club nights grind to a halt, livestreaming provides exciting new ways for DJs to make up some of that lost revenue.
Lockdown has dealt a severe blow to the music industry, with club nights across the world cancelled for the foreseeable future. For many music-lovers, the novelty of watching a favourite DJ play a set from their kitchen (aka “plamping”) has already worn off. In response to these shifting needs, livestreaming has become more social, with DJs and party collectives finding new ways to engage and interact with their audiences. Producers are streaming their music production sessions and hanging out with people in the chatroom.
In other words, livestreaming is evolving fast— and a whole new format is emerging before our eyes, providing opportunities for DJs to make up some lost income. So what options are out there right now, and how can you decide which is right for you and maximise its potential? We’ve done some digging to bring you all the answers.
Instagram Live and Facebook Live
The sheer size of these platforms make them great for engaging with your audience, and both have options to livestream. They aren’t, however, well-suited for uninterrupted DJ streams. In the last few weeks they’ve started blocking people mid-stream for playing copyrighted music.
The best use of these platforms could be to advertise your main stream, which you host elsewhere.
Their monetising options work by offering creators a percentage of advertising revenue. This is obviously at the annoyance of your audience, who has to sit through the adverts. It’s also not an option if Facebook decide that your stream is not “visually interesting” — which excludes the standard DJ-behind-a-set-of-decks look.
With that in mind, the best use of these platforms could be to advertise your main stream, which you host elsewhere. Be careful how you do it though, as Facebook and IG are known to demote posts that link away from their platforms.
YouTube Live
YouTube is the giant of Internet video. The streams work everywhere, in all browsers and all devices. Everyone is familiar with it and it’s nice and easy.
YouTube’s traditional monetisation method is called AdSense and is similar to Facebook and IG, in that you share advertising revenue. It’s has also been adding options, which now include Memberships — where people donate a regular monthly amount to your channel; and Super-Chat donations — where people in the chat can donate. Google takes a 30 percent commission on both revenue streams.
YouTube‘s options now include Memberships — where people donate a monthly amount, and Super-Chat donations — where people in the chatroom can donate.
That said, earning money via through YouTube via subscriptions and donations is not easy for DJ streams. For a start, it’s hard to qualify to be able to use these options: Your channel has to be in the YouTube Partner Program, which means your channel needs to have more than 30k subscribers and host a minimal number of videos with music claims. Of course, it’s a not-particularly-well-kept secret that YouTube will bend the rules for popular music channels, so it could be an option if you can get in their good books.
Twitch TV
Since lockdown, lots of DJs have started using Twitch. An Amazon-owned company since 2014, its main use is for gamers to stream their, well, gaming. The majority of traffic on Twitch is just that, with DJs and music streams making up a small percentage. But when it comes to DJ livestreams, the platform has a lot going for it. The format lets you engage authentically with your audiences and nurture of a grassroots community, and is a truly inspiring outcome of this strange moment in time.
Hip hop producer Kenny Beats has been at the forefront of the livestream evolution, with a Twitch channel that’s garnered 50k subscribers (at $5 per month each) and regularly attracts 5k people to the chatroom. Likewise, Dubstep legend Plastician is doing a similar thing, albeit to a smaller audience.
Twitch lets you engage authentically with your audience and nurture a grassroots community.
Unlike the other services mentioned so far, Twitch hasn’t been blocking streams for playing copyright music. However, this is all set to change with a new update to the community guidelines, which specifically ban DJ streams and outline a new strikes system — meaning that if your channel receives three DMCA takedown notices, you’ll be blocked.
Monetising on Twitch is via donations and subscriptions. Similar in concept to the new features in YouTube Live, people can donate, subscribe and also “gift” subscriptions. It’s easy to qualify to monetise your stream on Twitch, too: You just need to stream on 10 different days and get 50 viewers.
Once that’s set up, you can set different features for different subscription levels, such as accessing archived videos or special emojis for the chatroom.
The whole system on Twitch feels very gamified and aimed at a young audience — which makes sense as their user-base tends to be very young — but it’s worth keeping in mind that this could be off-putting for more mature audiences.
Payments for subscriptions and donations in Twitch are all tied to an Amazon Prime account, which makes it really easy to donate (and for kids to recklessly spend on their parents’ credit cards). Amazon take 50 percent commission on everything.
Twitch has a couple of useful features for DJ streams called “/host” and “/raid”. You can use these features to move an audience around. For example, when a DJ finishes their set, they can “raid” another channel, which means that the people watching that stream will be automatically moved over to the other stream. These are handy tools and worth getting to know if you have a group of DJs that all want to play together and share an audience.
Mixcloud Live
All of the platforms mentioned so far rely on DMCA Safe Harbours ,which means they have T&Cs that prohibit uploading of copyright content but they are not responsible for the content that users upload— they just have to be ready to comply with takedown notices. Mixcloud is different.
The newest platform to join the live streaming game, Mixcloud Live has blanket licences for playing music. That means you can play any music you want in a DJ stream and have no fear of it being blocked. The only rule is that you can play a maximum of four tracks by any one artist within a mix/show (and three of those consecutively).
In order to stream or monetise your account, you need a paid Pro account. Mixcloud is currently offering a three-month free trial on those. After that it’s a monthly fee (£9/€11/$15 depending on where you are in the world). The majority of this fee (65 percent) goes to the artists and labels whose music is played on Mixcloud.
Your Pro account also allows you to offer Subscriptions. You choose how much to charge and you can set exclusive access to certain uploads to subscribers. At the moment, there’s no way to limit Live streams to subscribers. Mixcloud suggests doing livestreams and then making the recordings exclusive for paying subscribers.
Mixcloud is the only platform to have innovated a way for DJs to livestream in a completely fair and legit way.
As a brand new service, Mixcloud’s offering is pretty light on features, but it has the basics that you’d expect — a streaming video, along with an integrated chatroom. We asked them what developments they’ve got coming up, and they confirmed that auto-archive is on the way, as is the ability to livestream exclusively to your paying subscribers. Both will be welcome additions. Saying that, Mixcloud Live already works well, with an easy and clean interface and good quality audio and video.
It’s worth noting that Mixcloud’s payment model means you will only receive a small percentage (<20 percent) of any subscriptions — see the image below for split and find full details here. But of all of the platforms, Mixcloud is the only one to have innovated a way for DJs to livestream in a completely fair and legit way. So there’s a lot to acknowledge and support here.
Other platforms
Some people have been using Zoom rooms, either as a side-chat channel for friends while they all watch the same stream elsewhere, or with a DJ playing straight into Zoom and everyone else on mute. Zoom has become a major player in online meetings and video calls during lockdown and presumably hasn’t had to deal with copyright issues yet, so remain in a grey area . We’d be interested to hear of anyone successfully using Zoom for online parties.
Regarding payments and subscriptions, a number of artists and labels have started accepting subscriptions through dedicated services. Patreon is one popular service for this, taking a 5 percent commission on subscriptions. Using a donation/subscription/patron service like this alongside a streaming platform could be the way to go for some.
Bandcamp has been doing amazing stuff to support indie artists and labels during lockdown, and rather than accepting donations, some people are directing viewers to their Bandcamp page to buy music — that could work well if your audience is made up of a lot of DJs; less well if it’s not.
Mozilla has a browser-based virtual reality technology called Hubs. Some might see it as gimmicky, but it does provide an interesting club-like experience. You pick an avatar then enter a room that has a stream playing. If you enable your mic, you can walk around the space and talk to people while in the VR club. The experience seems to work well for some people, while others get stuck or can’t get it to work — which can lead to a bit of a buzz-kill when the party turns into a technical support exercise. Up to 50 people can be in a Hubs room (though Mozilla has just published an article on scaling this to more people — for any techie types interested in hosting large VR parties).
Microsoft has a platform called Mixer which appears to be a clone of Twitch. We haven’t heard of anyone using it for DJ streams so again we’d be happy to hear from anyone using it. We’ll update this article if we do.
We hope this round-up has been useful. Please follow Feedback Loop if it has — and feel free to share any tips or experiences you’ve had with lockdown DJ livestreams in the comments below.
