StreamYard: the streaming tool we’ve been waiting for?

So, I am not sure how I became aware of it initially but I have been giving StreamYard a go.

What is StreamYard?

Basically you can Stream live, from your browser, to a number of different platforms (YouTube, Facebook, etc). This is all super easy and cheaper than more traditional methods:

Why might you be interested?

From an education and L&D background, I have used various online classroom/meeting tools over the years. These normally involve some level of friction for the user, be it logins, tracking, plugin installation, etc.

I recently only just realised that LinkedIn has a beta “live” feature – details here. StreamYard is one of the tools you can use to publish to your profile and/or page(s) via this – if you have LinkedIn groups this might be the way to go, being able to broadcast direct to your groups, rather than needing a separate meeting tool (at least for low interaction broadcasts).

The alternative to a browser based model is a tool like https://obsproject.com/ – an open tool but one that requires install and setup. When I have tried to use Twitch in the past I might have tried OBS but must admit I can’t actually remember what I used! Either way it was not as easy as how StreamYard makes things.

StreamYard trial

So, what have I found with StreamYard is that it is very easy to use. I ended up deleting most of what I created in the trial but it is noticeable that there are still hoops to jump through, for example, YouTube requires your phone number to allow you to live stream to your channel. Therefore, StreamYard might be the best tool in its space (considering ease and cost) but the platforms you stream to might still be a problem.