YouTube has announced that all channels with a least a 100 subscribers will now be able to offer live streams.
Making the announcement on the
YouTube Creators blog, the Google-owned video streaming service said that the feature was being rolled out to all channels in good standing, within the next few weeks. Channel owners will be able to enable the feature through their Account Features page.
Google had
extended live streaming functionality to channels with over 1,000 subscribers, in May.
Previously, the service was available only to select YouTube partners. It had started trials for the live streaming platform in September 2010, though it was streaming select events including the Indian Premier League, prior to that. The move democratises live broadcasts and makes it more mainstream.
YouTube offers channel owners real-time transcoding in the cloud, which essentially means that they only need to send their highest quality stream to YouTube and Google will make it available in all resolutions and device formats. Video producers can show multiple camera angles, add closed captions, and insert ads and slates to their live streams.
Viewers can watch the live stream from any device, with the video quality constantly adjusting to their Internet connection, and can rewind and forward in the live stream.
Google also offers Hangouts On Air on its social networking service Google+ that lets users take part in virtual roundtable style video chats broadcast for anyone to see, live. It also puts recordings of such broadcasts on YouTube after the end of these hangouts. This functionality was
extended in May.
During the same time, YouTube had informed that
over 100 hours of video were being uploaded every minute to the world's most popular video-sharing site. YouTube had also
launched paid channels, in a move that had placed it in direct competition with services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. The company had released a list of some 50 channels which will be part of the program. Subscription rates go as high as $7.99 per month.