24/7 livestreams are getting more and more popular on YouTube, Twitch and other video streaming platforms. Most of the channels use a video streaming server to create a continuous stream of entertainment. Our Broadcasting Server is the ideal solution for your 24/7 live streaming needs.
What are 24/7 live streams?
24/7 live streams are continuous live streams that run around the clock, seven days a week and without interruption.
The content can be either live content or pre-recorded content such as videos or music, which are played in succession or in combination. Some channels also broadcast live content at certain times and fill the remaining hours of the day with pre-recorded content to keep your audience entertained around the clock.
In terms of content, there is a lot of variation between 24/7 live streams – typical use cases can be news broadcasts, sporting events, wildlife cams, music or even co-working streams.
Advantages of a 24/7 live stream
24/7 live streams have a particularly notable advantage over other live streams: they are continuously live and reach a maximum audience. Regardless of whether your viewers live in a different time zone, are night owls or early risers – you and your content are live and can inspire and engage your community or generate new followers at any time.
You also have more opportunities to make your content particularly varied, as you can simply fit more into your schedule. However, a good balance should be struck here – too many topics that are not related to each other may appeal to a wider audience overall, but may weaken the loyalty of individual members of your community to your channel.
Being permanently live can also have a positive effect on the viewing time of your viewers and therefore also on the placement algorithm on the platform of your choice.
How do you run a 24/7 live stream?
Producing a successful 24/7 live stream requires a little planning. We give you an overview of the things you need to consider.
Choosing the right platform
Nowadays, there are a variety of platforms on which you can present your content to your audience. Choosing a platform can be difficult and should be carefully considered.
Target group: First of all, it is important to know which target group the 24/7 live stream should address, as not every platform is equally suitable for every target group. So think about which audience you want to address, which platform they use and where you may already have a community that could be interested in your 24/7 stream.
Monetization: Think about whether and how you want to monetize your 24/7 Live Stream (e.g. advertising, subscriptions, donations) and choose the platform that best suits your monetization goals.
Competition: Analyze your competition and find out whether your content is still a niche on a platform that is suitable for you in principle or whether you can provide the content there better than your competitors.
Platform guidelines: Take a look at the guidelines on the various platforms, especially with regard to your content and 24/7 live streaming. Some platforms have time limits for individual live streams and therefore automatically stop the stream after a certain number of hours. If you use streaming software such as OBS Studio for your streams, the stream may continue automatically after being interrupted by the platform. Otherwise, it must be restarted manually each time. These limits should be known and included in the platform evaluation.
If you cannot decide on a specific platform for your 24/7 live stream, it is also possible to broadcast it to several platforms at once. This allows you to address several target groups at once and maximize your reach. Our Multi Streaming Service is an easy way to do this without any extra effort.
Technical setup
24/7 streams present particular challenges in terms of the technical setup. As hardware and software are subject to heavy loads, overheating and failures can occur more frequently. Special attention should therefore be paid to using high-quality components and/or components designed for 24/7 operation.
For example, the right microphone, a high-quality camera, good lamps for optimum lighting, a reliable internet connection and a video encoder for transmitting images and sound. The exact setup you need depends on your content and individual requirements.
In particular, you should also consider whether you want to use your own streaming PC or a cloud solution to produce the stream and send it to the desired platform. Below we give you an overview of the two options and their advantages and disadvantages.
Own streaming computer
You can use your own local PC to operate a 24/7 live stream. However, this solution has a number of disadvantages.
Powerful hardware: Video encoding is a very computationally intensive task that requires correspondingly powerful hardware. So if you do not yet have a local PC that can handle this task reliably, you will need to buy one separately.
Reliability and reliability: A local PC may not be as reliable as a 24/7 live stream requires. There is an increased risk of hardware failures, software crashes or connection problems, which can lead to your stream going offline and you losing viewers.
Resource load: Continuous streaming places a heavy load on the resources of your local PC. This can cause your PC to slow down or become unstable, especially if you want to perform other tasks while streaming.
Power and cooling requirements: A PC that is operated around the clock consumes a considerable amount of power and generates heat accordingly. This can lead to increased energy costs and additional cooling requirements.
Limited bandwidth: The internet connection in your home may have limited bandwidth or be poorer at peak times, which can affect the quality and reliability of your stream.
Professional Live Streaming Service
Instead of using your local hardware for your 24/7 stream, you can also use a professional live streaming service that provides streaming software such as OBS Studio on a cloud server in a professional data center. This has various advantages over using a local streaming PC for your 24/7 live stream.
Powerful hardware: You do not need to purchase your own powerful hardware for tasks such as video encoding specifically for your 24/7 live stream.
Reliability and resilience: Cloud servers offer greater reliability and resilience compared to a local PC. By using cloud solutions, you can ensure that your stream is available around the clock and that no viewers are lost due to hardware failures or software problems.
Resource load: By moving your workflow to the cloud, you reduce the load on your local PC. You can continue to use it for other tasks without affecting the performance of your 24/7 live stream.
Power and cooling requirements: Professional data centers are designed for 24/7 operation. You do not have to worry about additional cooling options for your local PC or increased electricity costs due to 24/7 operation.
Bandwidth: Cloud servers usually offer a high bandwidth and a reliable internet connection. This ensures consistent quality and reliability of your stream, regardless of your local internet connection.
Plan and produce content
Filling 24 hours with content, 365 days a year, is no easy task. Above all, this should not be just any content, but ideally content that is produced to a high standard and is also interesting for your target group.
Remember that you don’t have to use only live content or only pre-recorded content. Many 24/7 live streams use a mix of both forms. Pre-recorded content in particular can be a great way to fill the time between live content. With modern streaming software such as OBS Studio, it is child’s play to create playlists and loop content in order to prepare the 24/7 live stream optimally and with enough lead time.
It’s best to make a plan of when you want to stream which content live in order to keep an overview. It may also be a good idea to share a program schedule with your audience. Especially for larger events that a lot of viewers might find interesting, it can have a positive effect on viewer numbers if they are announced in advance.
Monetarization
Even if a 24/7 live stream does not earn money from the very first moment in most cases, it is still important to think about the possibilities of monetization. Below we give you an overview of common monetization methods:
Advertising: a popular way to generate revenue from a 24/7 live stream is to run ads during the stream. Platforms such as YouTube and Twitch offer advertising programs where you can place ads before or during your live streams. You then receive a share of the advertising revenue, which varies depending on the platform.
Subscriptions: Some streaming platforms such as Twitch offer subscription programs where viewers can pay for exclusive benefits such as ad-free replays, emotes or subscription badges. You then receive regular monthly revenue from your subscribers.
Donations: Viewers can make voluntary donations to support your content. Platforms such as Twitch allow viewers to send donations directly via the platform. However, PayPal or Patreon can also be used for this purpose. Some content creators also collect donations for future streaming projects with predefined donation targets. In this case, it is helpful to communicate transparently to the audience what the money is being collected for and why the support is worthwhile.
Merchandising: You can create merchandising products such as T-shirts, mugs, stickers or other items with your channel branding and offer them for sale.This can be done via your own website or external e-commerce platforms, for example.
Sponsorship and partnerships: You can enter into partnerships with companies or brands that are willing to pay for advertising in your live stream, for example.
Affiliate marketing: You can embed affiliate links or codes in your live stream or profile and earn commissions on sales generated when the links or codes are used.This works particularly well if you recommend products or services that are related to your content or target audience and that you really believe in.
You don’t have to choose one of the options – often a combination of several is used to monetize the live stream. On most platforms, there are also requirements that your channel must meet (for example, a certain number of followers or hours that the live stream has been viewed within a certain period of time) in order to start monetizing at all.
The challenges of running a 24/7 live video stream
Running a live stream around the clock, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, can be a challenge. From the hardware-intensive task itself to internet connection drops, power outages, rising electricity costs and content scheduling, there are many challenges associated with running a live stream around the clock.
Technical stability: Maintaining a stable and reliable technical infrastructure is crucial. This includes ensuring a constant internet connection, high bandwidth, the availability of powerful hardware and the avoidance of failures at both hardware and software level. With our OBS-based Broadcasting Server, we have developed a solution that takes care of all the technical challenges and thus meets the high demands of a 24/7 live stream so that you can focus on delivering the best content. Embedded in a highly secure data center, we provide the ideal environment for reliable and secure live streaming for our customers worldwide.
Continuous high-quality content: Consistently producing interesting and engaging content that entertains your audience is a huge challenge. Creating and scheduling content suitable for a round-the-clock stream requires a high level of strategic planning and creative diversity.
Resource management: Maintaining a 24/7 live stream requires a significant amount of resources to ensure that the stream runs continuously and delivers high-quality content.
Monetization: Turning the 24/7 live stream into a revenue stream can be challenging. Competitor analysis and the identification and implementation of suitable monetization channels such as advertising, subscriptions or donations is crucial.
Community management: Interacting with the community in real time is an essential part of a successful 24/7 live stream. Effective management of chat, comments and feedback requires continuous presence and engagement.
Legal aspects and platform guidelines: Compliance with copyright and other legal regulations is crucial to avoid legal issues. You should also be aware of the platform guidelines to avoid your channel being blocked.
Can you stream 24/7 on YouTube and Twitch?
There is currently no limit on how long your live stream can run on YouTube. Accordingly, it is possible to run a 24/7 live stream on YouTube.
Twitch currently has a time limit for live streams – a single stream can be up to 48 hours long and is then terminated by Twitch. However, if the stream continues to run in streaming software such as OBS Studio, it is usually restarted automatically as soon as it ends. Otherwise, it can also be restarted manually immediately after Twitch has ended it. This means that 24/7 streams are also possible with Twitch despite a time limit of 48 hours.
How much money can you earn with a 24/7 live stream on YouTube?
You can currently earn money on YouTube with live streams via advertising as well as Super Chat and Super Stickers. The ads can be displayed either before the live stream(pre-roll ads), in the middle of the live stream(mid-roll ads – controlled manually or automatically by YouTube) or next to/above your content(display ads) during the live stream. Super Chat and Super Stickers allow your viewers to pay money for highlighting or pinning the message at the top of the chat feed.
The display frequency of the advertisements can be selected to some extent. The higher the display frequency, the higher the revenue potential. However, you can also scare off viewers with too much advertising, which is why caution is advised here.
Other factors that can influence the amount of advertising revenue are the number of ad impressions, the ad click-through rate and the ad prices. Ad rates can vary greatly depending on the industry, target audience, geographic location of users and other factors. Ad views and ad click-through rates also depend in large part on how well the ad matches the interests of your audience. YouTube has its own algorithm that determines which ads are shown and to which viewers. This is to ensure that the ad is relevant to the user and that they have a good user experience. You can positively influence these factors yourself, for example through your stream content, your stream quality and your stream duration.
In addition, many live streams not only earn money through advertising and super chat or super stickers, but also with merch, cooperations or affiliate links.
How much money you earn with a YouTube 24/7 live stream varies greatly for the reasons mentioned above and due to the large number of influencing factors, and therefore this question cannot be answered in general terms.
How to run a 24/7 music live stream on YouTube
To technically realize a 24/7 live stream on YouTube, our Broadcasting Server with OBS offers the best solution. This is hosted in a professional data center and offers the ideal environment for a stable and reliable 24/7 live stream thanks to high-performance hardware, air conditioning, uninterruptible power supply, fast and stable Internet connections and high bandwidths. This allows you to easily move the familiar environment of OBS Studio and its heavy workload from your local PC to a cloud environment optimized for 24/7 streaming.
You can then easily create a playlist of your selected music in OBS Studio. If you use streaming software other than OBS Studio, you can also install it on the server.
In terms of content, with a 24/7 music live stream you should think about what music you are legally allowed to use. Otherwise, you risk legal problems or a copyright strike by YouTube, which can lead to your channel being permanently blocked. There are various sources of music that you can use on YouTube. These include, for example
- the audio library from YouTube itself
- providers such as Pretzel Rocks, which provide a large library of licensed music for use in live streams or VODs for a fee
- Public domain music, which is created through the expiry of copyright
- Creative Commons music, the use of which is often subject to certain conditions, such as exclusive use in non-monetized content or attribution of the artist
With the options mentioned, you should find out in advance under what circumstances you are allowed to use the music and whether monetization is permitted.
How to create a playlist for 24/7 streaming
Creating a playlist in OBS Studio is very simple. By installing VLC you will have a new source added to your OBS Studio installation that lets you embed the VLC player into your OBS scene. Once the source is created you can add all media files like music files or video files to the playlist and those files will be played back in OBS in the order you define. If you want to keep it running 24/7 you simply need to activate the “loop” functionality inside the playlist so that the playback will be restarted once it’s finished. This allows you to run 24/7 streams including your desired audio and video files. You may also combine audio and video playbacks.
If you have a video that should loop, you can simply create a media source or a vlc source and loop the video file. You may then add another source for all the music that will be played simultaneously to the video loop. Simply add a VLC source as described above and add all the music files your music radio stream should play.
How to use a video streaming server for 24/7 livestreams
Setting up the Broadcasting Server is as easy as setting up a live stream locally.
We provide a powerful cloud server with full OBS Studio that offers the same features you would expect from a local broadcasting solution. Upload videos, images and audio files to the server to create the best 24/7 live stream content. Create different scenes that you can control manually or work with just one scene that plays a playlist of videos continuously. The server can be controlled remotely via our remote desktop connection or the customer portal, which you will receive access to after setting up your server.
If you have any special requirements, please do not hesitate to contact us at any time. We will be happy to help you.