#streaming advice

I'm gonna be honest, I tend to dislike being watched while I sketch, but I do it on stream anyway. You might find drawing and chatting actually makes you more comfortable and not overthink what you're doing. But in the end its up to you what you want to work on when streaming your screen!

And for a streaming set up, everything I use can be used for free!

First I stream with OBS: https://obsproject.com/

I've created my entire streaming layout all in there.

hey Purru!! one thing i will say is that for drawing specifically, you might have better luck w/ art specific streaming sites like Picarto; art streams on Twitch tend to get less engagement. i just choose Twitch bc it's a well known platform that most of my friends already have accounts on.

as for streaming: i use Streamlabs Desktop, you can download it through Twitch directly, or have your choice in other free software. OBS was my first one and still just as good imo.

try to do a practice stream so you can set everything up + know it works before the real deal (or just allow some extra time at the beginning for set up). if you want to make things look a little nicer, you can add a background image to your sources and that will be the background of your stream. here's what my set up looks like:

it's currently themed for Profic Halloween, and usually i pull the Clip Studio window a bit to the left to make room for Twitch chat on screen (since i don't use the chat overlays).

always use copyright free music when playing it in the background of your streams -- my go to is TheRelaxedMovement (though i'll still get "muted audio" warnings w/out any actual copyright strikes, i think it's bugged somehow)

I got to affiliate by 1. asking friends to lurk 2. holding myself to a consistent stream schedule and 3. putting effort into posting content outside of twitch

When I was starting out I asked some of my IRL friends to lurk my stream in a tab even if they weren't watching.

I would never recommend pressuring ppl to actively watch a stream as that is a big overstep, but asking some buds to just keep the tab open somewhere as a favor to get over that initial 3 average hurdle is reasonable.

Once I got affiliate I thanked my friends for their support and told them they didn't have to keep my tab open anymore, but some of them ended up enjoying the content enough that they still come to my streams regularly, and a couple even became mods for me!

Aside from that, I relied heavily on building an audience on TikTok and Twitter and converting them to my Twitch to build my stream community. Twitch discoverability is trash, so getting your content out to other platforms is super important and the earlier you start the better.

I started off with a philosophy of spending 3x the amount of time I spent actually streaming on Twitch each week into making content off the site and improving my streams. I set an expectation of myself that every Wednesday was my stream day and that I would treat it as if it were a job, only canceling or moving if absolutely necessary. I streamed once a week, then watched my own stream back to make clips, made 2 edited clips for TikTok, and any time left went to making the stream more interactive, like new channel point redeems, or just general improvements and planning content. Now that I have a bigger audience base I stream more and edit less, but it was crucial to my initial growth.

I also heavily watched my analytics across all platforms to see what content was performing best and leaned heavier into that. Higher CCV during art streams than games? I pivoted to creative content. Art posts flopped on TikTok? Focused on interactive stream clips instead. Twitter audience was made primarily of other vtubers rather than viewers? I put out tutorial content and focused on showcasing my rigging abilities to build my reputation in the vtubing scene.

do you have a music player (AIMP/musicbee/etc) that you prefer to use w streaming music?

and also will OBS pick it up easily or do i need to fuck w plugins?

im trying to get art streams set back up and id like to stream the info card that AIMP has but OBS fuckin despises it so im seein about maybe swapping to a diff player if another one streams w.o issue.

also need to set up a new stream overlay i actually like so! itd be a while yet but yknow

anyway yea if folks have suggestions reply here or send me an ask i guess

Oh it’s so beautiful! Great advice.

Thank you so much for the link!