Twitch, the leading live streaming platform where people play games, make crafts, and showcase their day-to-day lives, attracts over two million broadcasters every month. The number grows each year, thanks in part to how easy it has become to live stream, and platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube also increasingly encourage people to share and watch live stories. With the push of a button on your game console or phone, you can share whatever you’re doing at that exact moment with friends and strangers alike. The rise of popular (and profitable) influencers on platforms like YouTube and Twitch has also made the idea of being an online influencer aspirational. Some parents note that their children pretend to unbox toys to a nonexistent audience, and teachers report that their students often say they want to pursue YouTubing as a career. But when seemingly everyone wants to record footage or live stream, who ends up watching the content?
Starting a career on platforms like Twitch often means spending some time broadcasting to absolutely no one. Discoverability is an issue: when you log into Twitch, the most visible people are those who already have a large following. While there are tools to find lesser-known streamers, most people starting out without built-in audiences from other platforms or supportive friends and family end up staring at a big, fat zero on their viewership counter. This lonely live stream purgatory can last anywhere from a few days, weeks, months, sometimes even years, depending on your luck. According to people who have gone through it, lacking an audience is one of the most demoralizing things you can experience online.
This story feels so sad. Building and maintaining an audience is really hard, especially when you’re dependent on platforms like YouTube and Twitch who can pull the rug out from underneath you at any time.
People who like watching random idiots play really should take up some other hobby. It’s one thing to watch highly skilled players doing difficult stuff, but when you have nothing better to do than watch some mumbling rando trying to be funny, you know your life has hit rock bottom.
You’re reading this website and commenting here, which isn’t all that different, is it?
OSAlert does bring to my attention an interesting article every now and then
Thom, did you sort of say you’re “some mumbling rando trying to be funny”?
…then what am I doing here? 
I think this is interesting for a different reason. I don’t think it has something to do with people doing what they do, it’s just that youtube and twitch are now strictly a professional playground. YouTube stopped including you in it, they now produce their own content and the suggestion algorithm is so bad you can no longer count on it. If you watch a Donald trump clip, you get nothing but Donald trump clips. Either only left leaning or only right leaning, it’s crazy. If you watch one Honda review, you’re bombarded with a lot of Honda videos. This completely makes youtube worthless in my eyes. The same basic happened with twitch. It’s not the people, it’s in the platform’s interest not to show your clip. It’s time to start over again
I have quite contradictory experience. My recommendation list is filled with various things because I wanth all kinds of different topics. Also I have managed to train Youtube so that during the day from Monday to Friday, I want music from Youtube and from 5PM I want everything else and no music at all. And Youtube gives me that.
I have been using youtube for music for a really long time, it’s an amazing treasure trove for pirated music that doesn’t ever get taken down. Spotify Pandora and apple music don’t hold a candle to the music selection available (piracy) on YouTube. Spotify and Pandora are horrible for reggae, reggaeton, future house, house, Electro, drum and bass and a bunch of other music. But youtube’s recommendationa are no longer valid, especially for music discovery. I used to be able to reliably leave youtube playing the recommendations without interruptions, not anymore. Now it just wants to push high click videos that have little relevance
Edited 2018-07-17 23:48 UTC
I think most of the problem is the content is BAD. Maybe you should make something actually interesting instead of trying to stream some AAA game from 2018? I’ve had over 1000 viewers from 3 videos and had about 4-5 subscribers sign up from doing 3 clips about VR on Linux. I’m under no illusions that I could rant about something and noone would watch. People only care about what’s relevant to them. Just playing/unboxing items that everyone has access to isn’t enough to develop an audience. You have to have something special. That extra bit of wow factor that makes the clip worth watching. A world first is the best way to market yourself. Just being some Joe Blow guy doing an ordinary thing isn’t special.
Darkmage,
Sure there’s some lousy content, however when most content produced has no audience, that’s obviously not enough to pass judgement. It’s a numbers problem. When you’ve got millions of creators streaming per month, the creator/consumer ratio is simply too high regardless of quality. One can combat this problem by focusing on a niche domain, but make no mistake: if “linux VR” were ever to become popular, you’d be facing the same problem. It’s the small fish in big ocean / big fish in small pond dynamic. Personally I think there was far more opportunity for individuals when we had many more “smaller ponds” (aka local markets). As a result of massive consolidation around the world, a tiny fraction of creators are taking the whole cake.
I’m not going to name them here because I don’t want to give them any more social reputation than they already have, but frankly the big channels in content creation often displace superior content with utter crap by employing click bait to get massive views. I consider it spam and absolutely hate it, but until media platforms like youtube are willing to seriously alter their algorithms to promote quality indy content over advertising revenue, then I’m afraid we’ve lost the battle in supporting small independent creators. Whether we like it or not, creators are much better rewarded with cheap click bait and rank manipulation than with good content.
Edited 2018-07-17 04:14 UTC
.. it’s hard to break into a field that is already full of establisher players. It might require a lot of dedication and hard work to make it to the top and in the end you might fail.
No, really? Are you sure?
While there are several examples about people who make massive amounts of money with Youtubing, the approach for newcomers are wrong. The initial trigger should be passion to whatever you do. If you are interested in what you are doing and share the stuff merely on the basis that it is cool (to you) then that is the right place to start. If there will be other people interested in your content, then your channel will be noticed. Even if there are no watchers, who cares. You have created the cool content that is good even for yourself to watch later.
I’ve tried to do some flight simulation videos and got quite a lot of followers as I approached the task from a different angle. However it takes quite a lot of time and effort that for the past couple of years I haven’t found time for. Although I still have the followup ideas, I simply don’t know if and when I pick it up again.
I agree that getting to a level where youtube pays you decent salary is almost unreachable unless you are produceing videos several times a week and have hundreds of thousands if not millions of followers. Anything below that is just a hobby and should be taken as such. The creator must enjoy it without caring about the others.
When nobody has time/interest to watch perhaps we should burden some bots to do this job. They could leave some comments and comfort the poor broadcasters.
The current streaming popularity is based on system errors, and we have worked on fixing this, as part of my research, analysing ultimately the main concept, The G~A'dh, and fixing this. Regressions can be traced back to a mushroom god being overwritten on Adams tablet!
A mushroom god that is very symbolic, and often associated with psychiatric illness.
Civilization started with the ban on the forbidden tree. And a good streaming economy will start, likewise.
Diassociating this again with a z~A(c)n concept of The G~A'dh, N`E^3`E^3nh, B~A'ss Of Uv~A(c)rse, keeping monotheistic developments only, until now, is the beginning..
more at http://www.nyt.cloud BBS!
Hi Nix
Your forum there is, in fact, the perfect illustration of broadcasting into the void, thank you!
From the forum;
Yes, yes I would.
While ofcourse having few readers does not mean someone is going to bitch.
Which is also what we are trying to address, using a monotheistic profile. On OSAlert ofcourse, acidgod is not at all about fairness nor avoiding bitching.