Twitch launches creative live-streaming for artists
David Farnor | On 30, Oct 2015
Twitch has launched a new creative live-streaming service to run alongside its gaming videos.
The site, which was bought by Amazon for almost $1 billion last year, has seen explosive growth since its launch, with a large community springing up around the idea of sharing and streaming live gameplay.
“We decided to do everything we could to support this burgeoning community, and immersed ourselves in the gaming world,” explains Twitch on its official blog.
That unique focus upon video games set Twitch apart from the growing online video space, with YouTube even launching its own dedicated portal, YouTube Gaming, to compete. Now, though, Twitch has surprised everyone by adding a new string to its bow.
Twitch Creative will provide a platform for artists, crafters and builders to stream their work to the masses.
It’s a growing market: thousands of people watch artists show the behind-the-scenes work that goes into their pieces on YouTube and other VOD services. Only a few months ago, a new site launched called Sywork (short for “show your work”) dedicated to doing just that.
Twitch, though, has its own plans. The expansion may seem unexpected, but the site notes that its new target users “share many of the same characteristics as all Twitch broadcasters: passion, engagement, and a community-centric worldview”.
The site now includes a separate landing page for videos in the Creative category, including a dedicated Featured Video carousel to highlight interesting broadcasts.
There is also a unique tagging system with tags such as #drawing, #animation, #watercolor and #robotics to help single out the artistic content.
The site has also updated its Rules Of Conduct.
“We encourage you to broadcast your creative process on Twitch, be that visual art, woodworking, costume creation, prop building, music composition, or any other process in which you entertain and connect around a creative activity,” says the site’s blog. “We understand that this is vague. We expect to learn much about what is, and is not, appropriate for Twitch as the community grows.”
To celebrate the launch, Twitch has also bought the rights to the original Bob Ross show, The Joy of Painting, which is being streamed all in one go across 8.5 days at www.twitch.tv/bobross.