🔴 Is TikTok LIVE Studio Good Now?

Hey, it’s Harry.

Welcome back to another week of the streaming and content journey.

Have you looked at Twitch’s art category this week? Don’t do it while at work! 😂

We’ll discuss that and a host of other Twitch changes shortly.

📰 In Today’s Edition

• 👀 Is LIVE Studio actually good now?

• 🟣 Twitch makes some curious rule changes

• 📈 MrBeast releases a helpful tool for YouTubers

• 🔴 Free gifted memberships on YouTube

🔴 Is TikTok LIVE Studio Good Now?

Were you an early user of TikTok LIVE Studio (LS)? I remember it being full of bugs and lacking in features. LS has come a long way since then. Is it now better than OBS or Streamlabs? Let’s take a quick look.

How Has it Improved?

While LS is still missing key features that phone streamers have, most notably LIVE battles, TikTok has worked throughout 2023 to add more features.

Key new features include compatibility mode and themes, alongside quality-of-life updates such as the ability to add moderators, remove chat messages and ban viewers directly from LS.

They’ve also added audio-only multiguest and steadily improved features that already existed such as goals and alerts. The LIVE Center has been improved to include a clip editor and links to more guidelines and rules.

We are now at the point where LS has multiple TikTok-specific features that OBS or other software simply can’t do. At the same time, TikTok has worked hard to improve performance. While people often still report bugs to me, the volume is lower than in 2022.

My Thoughts

LS is now a viable option for most Windows PC streamers. That said, it still has weaknesses.

The benefit of OBS is that it is open source and therefore anybody can create plugins for it. By far my favourite plugin is Aitum Vertical from Harris Heller’s team. Theoretically, TikTok could open up the LS codebase to third parties but given how they operate I find this highly unlikely.

Given this lack of third-party customisation, it makes multistreaming much more difficult with people having to rely on virtual or multiple cameras. I’ve long preached about the benefits of multistreaming in terms of protecting from false bans and increasing your reach and monetisation potential.

In summary, if you’re just streaming on TikTok then LS is fine. If you’re multistreaming then get a stream key and use OBS or Streamlabs. Here is my most recent multistreaming guide.

2024 Guide

If you’ve been previously reluctant to give LS a go then I have just released my updated 2024 setup guide. If you don’t have access to LS yet then try this link.

Your Thoughts?

🟣 Twitch

You have not gone crazy. The X post below is real and is on over 22M views at the time of writing. However, I think it’s important to note that a “view” on Twitter is really an impression.

What has Twitch announced?

You can read the full blog post here. My friend ChatGPT is here with a summary:

• Illustrated Content Allowed: Twitch permits illustrated nipples and "erotic dances," but continues to ban human underboob.

• Animated/Sculpted Nudity Rules: Fictional nudity is okay; augmented reality avatars follow regular attire rules.

• Nudity and Attire Clarity: Specific guidelines for acceptable nudity and attire, especially regarding female-presenting nipples.

• Sexual Content Policy Streamlined: "Sexually suggestive" and "explicit" categories merged into one policy.

• Artistic/Dance Content Permitted: Artistic nudity and erotic dances like strip teases and twerking are allowed with labels.

• Context-Based Attire: Attire acceptability varies based on stream context.

• Mature Content Off Homepage: Mature-tagged streams are excluded from Twitch’s homepage.

• Ban on Extreme Content: The ban on sex games, sexual violence, and pornography content continues.

TechCrunch has written a more detailed summary.

P.S. As mentioned, ChatGPT summarised this for me. It’s part of GPT4’s search feature. Here is how I did it. I thought I’d share it as an example of how AI helps me as a creator.

My thoughts

Ultimately, gaming and chatting still dominate on Twitch. View the art category at your own risk! It is definitely wild right now but as I write this it’s not even in the top 30 categories and will drop further as the hype dies down.

Just Chatting is usually the top category. A quick look through reveals nothing to me that wasn’t there before these changes.

As usual, the world of content creation likes to overreact. There is financial benefit from doing so in the form of ad revenue, even on X/Twitter now. The early evidence indicates that 99% of Twitch viewers are not seeking out this newly allowed content.

If Twitch keeps this type of content away from the homepage and if discovery is only possible if you actively seek it then personally I have no issue. It’s an emotive topic though so feel free to hit reply and share your thoughts!

🤔 Thought For The Week

Does TikTok have the worst customer support in the social media industry?

🚀 Support From $0.99

If you want to support my work you can become a member for under $1.

There are four tiers:

• 🥉 Bronze - Discord role plus member badge

• 🥈 Silver - Priority support channel (plus previous perks)

• 🥇 Gold - Name mentioned at end of the video (plus previous perks)

• ⚪ Platinum - Monthly strategy call (plus previous perks)

🎬 Weekly Video

Unfortunately, Chaos Tricks copyright striked my Chaos Connector videos. So while I can’t share tutorials about using it for TikTok, I can share how to use it on Twitch.

So here is how your Twitch viewers can send bits to control Minecraft.

🎯 Bullet Point News

• MrBeast launches the ViewStats website and Chrome extension. It helps you analyse other YouTube channels. From my initial impressions, this is a SocialBlade killer!

• Twitch is shutting down Squad Stream in favour of Guest Star.

• YouTube is allowing anybody with channel memberships to give 10 gifted memberships for FREE every single month!

• Just One Block is an interactive Minecraft plugin for TikTok and you can try it for 30% off with code HARRY.

• Sponsorships are an important topic for creators and nobody teaches the subject better than Justin from Creator Wizard.

👋 Thanks for reading!

Harry

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