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DJing Live on Facebook and Twitch

Over the past few weeks I’ve been experimenting with streaming my sets live through Facebook and Twitch. Twitch is much more lenient on their music policies but it’s much easier to build an instant audience on Facebook.

https://vimeo.com/398605246

What You’ll Need

#1 – Webcam: You’ll need webcams of some kind, either built into your laptop, monitor or plug-in USB webcams. I have two, one good webcam for a large frontal view and a cheaper webcam for closeup angles.

#2 – USB Audio Interface: You’ll also need a USB audio interface. These can be picked up for $10-20, you should also be able to use a mixer you have lying around if it has a USB hookup. Ultimately you’re going to run your master output into the USB audio interface so your computer can see it as a type of microphone input. This is what I used. I have an article here that goes further in-depth on leveraging the most from standalone mixers.

USB Audio Interfaces will show up in applications like Audacity and OBS under Inputs.

#3 – Streaming Software: Then you’re going to need software to manage the stream. I used Wirecast in this example on its free trial, but its expensive ($250). OBS is a great free alternative, though it has been known to have issues running on Macs (womp). If anyone finds a cheaper alternative for Mac I’m all ears.

I’m personally pushing my feed to a service called Restream which allows me to forward it to multiple sites (Twitch, Chew.TV, Facebook, etc). When I’m streaming directly to Facebook Live through Wirecast, it does not allow me to also stream to Twitch for some reason, so I use Restream to get around that.

Facebook is also picky about the format it will take. Follow these guidelines in your software settings to ensure Facebook doesn’t reject your feed.

Don’t Get Booted

Once you get your rig setup and streaming, stick to edits and remixes found in record pools – not on iTunes or Spotify!! You want to throw off the algorithm that automatically finds matches based on the waveform. Sometimes it will pick up the lyrics, but I’ve found that parts of the video will simply be muted after the fact, once I’m done live streaming.

Good luck!