Livecast streaming. Have you heard about this?
You must’ve heard about Youtuber’s that are livecast streaming 24/7 on their channel and make thousands of dollars a month.
You’ve probably asked yourself, are they live streaming 24/7 from their laptop and taking quick naps in between?
We recommend OneStream as the easiest and most feature rich live streaming platform for both beginners and expert professionals.
What is Livecast Streaming?
Livecast streaming is a technique whereby you simply live stream a pre-recoded video.
You may have heard it being referenced by fake live stream simulator, recorded live stream or stream recorded.
All of these terms mean the same thing. Record a video and then live stream it. So no, these Youtubers are not sitting by their laptop for 24/7 live streaming. In fact, they are doing the opposite. Sleeping 24.7.
Benefits of Non-stop Livecast Streaming
Live streaming 24/7 can offer several benefits, including:
- Increased Audience Engagement: Continuous live streaming can attract and retain viewers for longer periods of time, leading to higher engagement levels. It allows viewers to tune in at their convenience, creating a sense of anticipation and community around the content.
- Extended Reach: Non-stop live streaming can reach audiences across different time zones and regions, maximizing the potential for global viewership. This can help broaden your reach and attract a diverse audience that may not have been able to participate in live events due to geographical limitations.
- Enhanced Brand Exposure: Consistent live streaming can help establish and reinforce your brand identity. It allows you to showcase your expertise, personality, and unique offerings to a wider audience, leading to increased brand exposure and awareness.
- Opportunity for Monetization: Live streaming 24/7 can open up opportunities for monetization, such as through sponsorships, partnerships, and donations. The continuous presence of live content can attract advertisers and generate revenue streams to support your content creation efforts.
- Improved Content Visibility: Regular live streaming can improve the visibility of your content on social media platforms. Social media algorithms often prioritize live content, leading to higher visibility in feeds and search results, and potentially attracting more viewers.
- Real-time Interaction: Live streaming allows for real-time interaction with your audience through comments, messages, and Q&A sessions. This can foster a sense of community, build relationships, and create a loyal following, as viewers feel more connected and engaged with your content.
- Content Repurposing: Non-stop live streaming can generate a wealth of content that can be repurposed across various platforms and formats, such as highlights, clips, and teasers. This can help you extend the lifespan of your content, reach new audiences, and enhance your content marketing strategy.
Best Practices for 24/7 Live Streaming
The number one best practice for livecast streaming is engaging content. Just streaming content live 24/7 is not going to guarantee success.
It should be content users actually want to see at any hour of the day or content that can be scheduled to run at specific times.
Examples of successful Livecast streaming
- livecast webinar: pre-record webinars or training sessions can be broadcast live to create a sense of urgency and encourage audience participation. This allows for better control over the content, timing, and quality of the presentation.
- Product Launches and Announcements: Fake live streaming can be used to create buzz and excitement around a product launch or announcement. Pre-recorded content can be streamed as live, with interactive elements such as Q&A sessions or polls added to create a sense of engagement and anticipation among viewers.
- Live Events and Conferences: Pre-recorded content such as panel discussions during live events and conferences. This can help manage technical challenges and ensure a smooth viewing experience for remote attendees.
- Interviews and Talk Shows: Create a sense of authenticity and immediacy. This allows for better control over the content and presentation flow and can be especially useful when coordinating with multiple guests or managing time constraints.
- Content Repurposing: Fake live streaming can be used to repurpose recorded content, such as past live streams or recorded events which can be streamed live on social media. This can help extend the lifespan of the content, reach new audiences, and maximise its value.
- Global Audiences: easily live stream to audiences in different time zones by scheduling pre-recorded content to be streamed live at convenient times for various regions. This allows for broader reach and engagement with audiences around the world.
Software to use for Livecast Streaming
There are many platforms available with many different features to set up a simulated streaming service.
But to configure a truly automated system it should really have the following features:
- Be able to schedule the live stream
- Live stream a playlist
- Upload and live stream a pre-recorded video
Here are some of the most popular platforms offering this feature
OneStream
OneStream is an all in one live streaming solution. It has a very reasonable pricing model and is incredibly easy to use.
For those who are interested in 24/7 live streaming, simulcasting and simulated live streaming solutions Onestream has it all.
There really is too many features to list, but below are some highlights that make this product stand out.
- Live Spaces: create professionally designed web pages featuring your live streams
- Playlist Streaming: create pre-recorded playlist for live streaming
- Unified Chat: one stream of comments and replies from multiple social networks
- Easily Import Videos: import videos from S3 storage or cloud storage providers like Google drive and Dropbox
These are just a few features that make it stand out, particularly the unified chat box.
Just to give you some idea of how powerful it is, you can build a custom web page for your live stream, simulcast it across multiple social networks and display all the comments and replies on your custom web page.
OneStream is a clearer winner for those who want a full featured, live streaming platform thats easy to use.
Restream
Probably the most popular of all, Restream has been built specifically to live stream recorded videos and simulcast across multiple social media platforms.
It starts with a free tier all the way up to $46 a month. Quite cheap to be honest if what you are doing is setting up a 24/7 money making machine.
Cloudinary live streaming
Cloudinary offers a lot more features, not just live streaming but for video in general. Things like APIs, SDKs and video transcoding.
It’s been built more for the heavy video developer than building something more complete than just live streaming to social media and its reflected in the pricing tiers.
Although it starts free, it can reach $224 per month and beyond for enterprise solutions.
Streaming Video Provider
A smaller player in the space, this platform enables scheduling of pre-recorded videos to stream live on social media.
It’s quite a feature rich and includes all of the usually video streaming services like simulcasting, video hosting, pay per view.
The price point is quite high compared to others starting at $100 a month. So you’d have to be making money before going with this solution.
Ant Media Server
This enterprise-level streaming engine is a live streaming software that you need to install.
There are two versions, the community version (free) and the enterprise version (licensed). While the enterprise edition does support ultra-low latency streaming using WebRTC, it’s not needed to successfully run a livecast stream.
The community version can be easily installed using a few commands, but does require a VPS to run comfortably.
Although there is no way to schedule the pre-recorded video, it’s possible to create a playlist of multiple videos that playback in a sequence. The sequence of videos could last up to 24 hours.
We also recommend Cloudways as the preferred hosting provider. They offer a managed VPS solution at reasonable prices for your media server.
If you’re feeling rather techie, you can convert an M3U8 file to an RTMP for restreaming using FFMPEG. If you’re interested in how to do that, read more.