We’ve been thinking about do live streams for a while, and this Special Offer seems like the perfect opportunity. We were thinking of just using Google Hangouts, but it seems the thing to use is Discord.
Could I ask how it works? It looks like it can integrate with Patreon so you can see who is a patron and which tier they are at (which is awesome). I was wondering if you can stream to only your patrons?
We would have to encourage our existing chat room users (we currently use Gitter as we are programmers) to move over, but so far they seem to be ok with the idea.
So sorry for my delay here. Discord is definitely a great app, and the integration does make it easy for you to manage access to your patrons at different tiers.
What exactly are you hoping to do with your streams? If you’d like folks to ask questions, and expect a smaller group, Discord might be the right place to host it. However, if you want to have larger events, I suggest Google Hangouts, since it’s relatively ubiquitous, or Zoom, since you can easily record sessions, and there’s a great chat feature. How often are you thinking about hosting streams? Do you want chat and streams to happen in the same place?
Patreon also has integrations with YouTube Live, and Crowdcast. Crowdcast is the service I used for our web class, and it’s a bit more robust. You can host larger groups, provide chat, record, and invite folks up on screen to talk, but it is a paid-for service. Being a creator provides you a discount, but it is something to consider.
Would love to hear more and help figure out where the right place to host this will be!
Yes, this is a question I am pondering. I want to test the service ahead of time. I was going to start with YouTube live and then maybe set a milestone to switch to Crowdcast? I don’t mind spending the extra money if it makes the whole experience much better for patrons and if I have the patrons to show for the extra expense.
Keep in mind that Hangouts and Zoom both have limits on the number of people in a video call.
I think you’re on track with using YouTube live because it’s free and most people are familiar and don’t have to download anything.
I donated to someone else on patreon and got invited to someone’s discord page. It seems like a rather complicated way of interacting w/the person you want to support and most of the stuff was between fans rather than the person herself.