We musicians need to be able to connect with our fans and a great way to do that is through live music sessions. Fans can ask questions and get direct answers, hear your latest song, and get informed on what's cooking in the studio. But I haven't been able to do this because of technical difficulties. OBS has been too complicated for me to use and it required using way too much CPU. The last time I tried to send a FaceBook live it wouldn't work so I gave up dejectedly about streaming for months.
Then I heard Nick Nimmin, the YouTube wiz, talk about StreamYard and I set out to look into it. StreamYard, I've found, is much easier to use than OBS. It's cloud-based, (saves CPU), and is user intuitive - something OBS never was. Of course, I'll have to pay a yearly fee after the six day trial period but it is worth it.
So what exactly is StreamYard?
The video above will get you informed about it and get you started. And, no, I am not getting paid to say this. You may have some other and better solution. If so, please comment below!
Stream to multiple destinations!
Another thing that is much better than OBS is the ability to stream to multiple destinations (Your Facebook page, Your Facebook profile page, Linked in; Twitch and YouTube) simultaneously. If you'd done that through your Mac it would have choked, but this in the cloud service makes the undoable (in OBS), doable!
How I intend to use it
I plan on sending in English once a week and Swedish once a week at least, for starters. The flag on the YouTube thumbnail above is an example of how I am going to help people see which language the video is in.
Free and paid versions
You can try it for free for 6 days. If all goes well during my next five days of the trial period, I'll definitely upgrade StreamYard to a paid version.
What I noticed was a direct and positive response from my fans during each live session. The first few times I didn't get my Soundcraft MTK 12 to send the mic and the guitar at the same time. My sister, who was kind enough to give me feedback said she only heard my voice, not the guitar. So I started looking into why I couldn't get the sound right. Nothing wrong with my mixer. Nope. All I had to do was change the output to "internal microphone". and then ppl could hear both.
You can also check the sound by recording (not sending live) within Stream Yard and keep doing that until you get eh sound right.
You can check to see if your guitar and voice are coming through by watching the microphone meter and checking each sound separately.
Just a few other tips to help your experience on StreamYard nail it:
- SOUND: Make sure that you turn off the echo cancelation if you are playing music and check to see what works best for you with all the other sound options.
- GRAPHICS: create your own intro video that starts at the beginning. A countdown or something while people are logging in. Also you need a thumbnail to post it to YouTube and wherever else you are going to have this LIVE video posted. I use Canva to create my graphics. It's free and easy to use.
Well that's all I have to say about this so far.
Until next time.
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