[mrguyorama]

The problem is that basically no content creators could self start in that world. Right now, most of these companies benefit from having a massive pipeline of kids dreaming to be stars, who all shoot their shot at streaming. Some inevitably have a knack, or catch some fad, or something, and can generate massive revenue and replace the people who have been chewed up and extracted by the machine, because it's basically designed to burn you out.

Any content distribution system that doesn't give away a free tier would have to build it's own pipeline for training, filtering, testing, and motivating creators.

[Dylan16807]

If you haven't caught an audience yet then you're probably streaming to very few people. A few dollars can cover that bandwidth until you get one or two subs or donators.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

I'd also venture to guess (no hard numbers) that most successful streamers -- measured as "they don't need a day job" -- started streaming as a hobby. Such a person is much more likely to be willing to spend a few dollars a month, especially considering they'll likely already have purchased a microphone and webcam.

That being said, maybe it's better for it to be free considering the people paying for such a hobby would be among this "massive pipeline of kids dreaming to be stars".

[Dylan16807]

In practice there are lots of ways to stream for free to a small audience, and that is a good thing. I just don't think the idea of paying for bandwidth would be much of a barrier.

[baud147258]

> most successful streamers -- measured as "they don't need a day job"

I think it's closer to 'Streaming is their day job'...

[rootsudo]

It's a good idea that just revitalizes the old agent-management-star relationship. I wonder if this is how they do it in Japan with their idols and such. I don't know of any single platform that they all market on, they all roll their own website and such and the agent/manager funds everything.

On the other hand, seeing it/knowing it from real life and seeing it now making anime as a standard plot is also exciting and a bit sad. See Aggretsuko and Oshi no Ko. Both are products of pop culture of Japan that reflect the current trends of this management/money first style.

[veave]

So self-start in twitch, which is free, and then move onto another platform that allows for sponsorships once you get one and can therefore afford to pay for the bandwidth.

[sushid]

It's not easy to move your viewership out of Twitch. Even top Twitch streamers had this difficulty so it's not going to be doable for an up and coming streamer.

[redavni]

Which is an indicator of the utility of the streamer vs the utility of the platform.

In a world with better social policies, the real question would be whether profiting off of teenagers marketing to other teenagers should be unregulated and whether the absurd heavy-handed selective censorship and highly questionable moral compass of Twitch Inc should be continued allowed to shape children.

[rektide]

What evidence do you have that getting self started is so impossible?

[d1str0]

Common sense given economy of scale.

There’s definitely a barrier between totally free and even just a few dollars a month in bandwidth.

[tomkarho]

I agree with the sentiment but I'd love to see some numbers to that effect.

Here's my lousy attempt (someone more fluent in math than me, please correct because these numbers seem crazy to me so I concede the high probability that I am wrong).

Let's say I want to stream hd picture so bandwidth requirement would be roughly 3MB/s. That's what I presume it takes to deliver one second of hd video to a single person. Let's assume that there is some mighty compression in play and that brings it down to 1mb/s.

Let's assume I became popular enough that my servers are streaming data 24/7. that's 86 400 seconds so 86 400MB ~ 86GB. Per day. For one person to get my awesome video content constantly.

Most VPS providers give certain amount of bandwidth with the initial offerings. I am using Digital Ocean as reference which means roughly that for each 5$ (the cheapest VPS) you get 1tb (or 1000 GB) of bandwidth until they start billing for more.

So for "free" you get to send data to 1000 / 86GB = 11.6 ~ 12 people max until you start getting billed extra. Per day.

DO bills 0.01$ per GB over the limit. If it takes 86GB to deliver content 24/7 to one person, imagine a thousand. That's 860$. Per day.

Let's add some server costs and extra transfer for all the youtube-ish ui experience and I think we can land to a solid 1000$. Per. Day.

[ThatPlayer]

I'm not sure I'd use a VPS. Cloudflare Stream does both live streaming and on-demand video. $1 per 1,000 minutes. Not a lot better than your estimate, but it includes the server costs as they handle transcoding too. I haven't tried their player to compare with YouTube though.

https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/