My Twitch journey: the first three months of being a Twitch music streamer

In this series of posts, my intention is to share my progress of being a musician on Twitch.

In this update, I’m sharing some facts, figures and reflections about my first few months.

But before you read the article, go follow me on Twitch!

Getting started on Twitch as a music streamer

Making the decision to start streaming your music on Twitch is the first step on quite an arduous, but nevertheless enjoyable journey.

There’s no getting around it – there is quite a technical learning curve to producing a reasonable quality stream. Being someone who enjoys getting to grips with software and figuring out how to make things work, I was probably quite confident that I wanted to start off with something half decent that made it look as though I knew what I was doing. Fake it till you make it? But I can imagine that most of my musical peers would probably find the technical barrier very steep, perhaps even too steep.

Looking back, I think I probably spent too many evenings tweaking and testing and wanting things to be perfect, where it may have been better to actually stream more often!

Streaming from an old laptop

I started streaming from an old laptop which clearly wasn’t powerful, and I had to make big compromises to the stream to get it to run smoothly. That would be a topic for another post entirely.
Switching to my main desktop PC was a massive improvement, and I wished I’d used it from the start.

Tip: Focus on producing the best stream you can, from the point of view of the viewer’s experience. People will prefer a low-resolution smooth stream than a full HD stream that stutters and drops frames.

Sometimes it could be a struggle to hit the button to go live.

I know that many new streamers can struggle with anxiety around hitting that button to start streaming. It’s nerve-wracking! There’s a sense of expectation (your own and the audience’s) and not wanting to let yourself down, either from a technical or a performance perspective.

Tip: Create a “Starting Soon” scene within your OBS, with a countdown timer set for say, 5 minutes. This scene can include just some basic text, or any background images you want. But if you make sure it doesn’t include your camera or your microphone sources, you can go live, knowing that you’re still not broadcasting yourself. As a simple psychological trick, this really worked for me, just to help get over that initial difficulty. After a few months of streaming every week, this is no longer an issue for me, so the other lesson here is that if you “just do it”, it does get a lot easier!

Ignore the numbers

I discovered that watching the numbers during a stream was a very bad idea.

Sure, it was exciting to notice that some new viewers had come in, but if I saw the numbers go down, it would set off some negative thinking and generally put me on a downer, as I could become focused on what I might have done wrong, and if my set list was not commercial enough, or if I was just too boring, or too old to be on Twitch. Horrible, self-defeating thoughts that did nothing to help, and everything to distract me away from just enjoying it.

I think my best streams were when I was more upbeat and energetic, and being unaware of the stats helps me to not get distracted.

Tip: Don’t try to cater for everyone. Do what you do, and you’ll attract the people who appreciate what you do. All those others who left? Well, your stream wasn’t aimed at them anyway.

At first my streams were around an hour and this gradually increased. For me, this was mainly about the vocal stamina to sing so many songs. But that’s a great part of the process – it’s great training and you soon get used to longer sets (which seem to do better because the longer you’re live, the more people will come into your stream, including more chance of getting raids, etc)

Performance – my Twitch stats

There are various ways to measure success, largely depending on what the end goals are.

• Do I want to get to a thousand followers?
• Do I want to earn money?
• How much is “enough”?
• Do I want to see people coming back regularly?
• Do I want to feel happy about what I’m doing?
• Do I want to look forward to my streams and see it as fun, not work?
• Do I want to feel that I’m improving as a performer, as a result of playing on Twitch?

The Twitch dashboard gives you access to various stats which as you might expect, can only focus on the hard numbers. The softer, more qualitative side of things is much more subjective and down to you to evaluate.

So here’s what the Twitch data tells me after my first 3 months of streaming (mostly) once a week.

My Twitch stats as a music streamer – first three months.

Month	Average viewers	New Followers	Subscriptions	Revenue	Time streamed
October 2021	2.2	105	0	0	06:15
November 2021	5	62	4	10.94	11:20
December 2021	4.2	16	3	11.54	11:42

Some notes on the data:

There are no earnings for month 1 because I had not yet reached affiliate.

Christmas meant other priorities so I probably spent less time watching other streams and doing the networking thing in December.

Becoming a Twitch Affiliate

It took me around 4-6 weeks to become an “affiliate” on Twitch. Was this fast? Average? I’ve no idea!

I think what helped a lot in those early days was regularly watching lots of other music streamers, and engaging in their chat. Many of them would notice the “first time chatter”, and some would also ask if I was a streamer. I would respond that, yes I was new to Twitch and loving it so far. More often than not, the streamer would then urge all their viewers to give me a follow to help me to get to Affiliate.

Tip: If you’re a music streamer, have the word “music” in your username. This makes it more likely for other streamers (and their mods) to give you a shout-out or to be curious and ask you questions. Remember though – don’t spam other streamers’ chat about your stream unless invited to share some details, and be modest, don’t take advantage. Be respectful.

My Twitch earnings – first three months

For some people, this might be the most important bit of information. For me, it’s not, but I understand the level of interest.

For approximately half of this three month period, I was working towards becoming an affiliate on Twitch, so the earnings shown really only cover that latter 6 week period, and amounts to just over $20.

I’ve no idea if this is fairly typical. I’m certainly conscious that when I watch other streamers, I quite often see that many have been fortunate to acquire some super-fans who tend to purchase a great number of gift subs on their channel.
So far, I’ve yet to attract such generosity and admiration!

Also, the data here does not include private donations, but if it did, it would say zero.

What it’s really meant to me.

The most significant thing I’ve experienced has been purely down to all the people who have tuned in and been supportive of my channel, especially those who have become “regulars”. It’s so heart warming to receive genuine praise and knowing that people out there have enjoyed listening. I feel I’ve benefited a lot from all the regular playing too. My voice feels stronger and my guitar noodling has felt more confident. And when I think, this is just after 3 months! Who knows where it will go if I just keep turning up regularly and doing my thing?

So, that’s my summary of my first few months on Twitch.
I hope that if you’re a new streamer, or just thinking about getting started on Twitch, some of this info might be useful to you.

My intention is to share quarterly updates of the stats, together my thoughts and reflections of what I pick up as I go along. Some of these will inevitably prompt ideas for more detailed blog posts too.

Are you a streamer? How was your first three months?
Feel free to share your own progress and your advice and tips in the comments below.