Live Streaming and Twitch taking over TV

It has been a while now since online streaming services were first introduced to the world and they are more popular than ever. Just on Twitch.tv , the number of unique daily viewers is above 15 million and over 150 million unique viewers tune in on a monthly basis. The numbers are insane for a service, which came out in 2011 and isn't even ten years old yet. Netflix has around 150 million subscribers, so Twitch is even bigger than that.

Also other platforms like Mixer are gaining popularity right now, especially since big streamers like Ninja or Shroud switched from Twitch to Mixer. Live streaming services have started to compete with each other, which is good, because through competition advertisement and financial support will rise, which will result in even more viewers.

YouTube gaming/ Live is another popular live streaming service, where most of the non gaming people first heard about live streaming and eventually found their way into watching live streams.

All of these platforms are on the rise right now and have been slowly overtaking the TV entertainment industry. A lot of todays people rather follow a certain person than particular shows. And since streamers are usually streaming almost every day for a lot of hours (~6-8 hours), these people rather spend their time watching the stream than watching a show for 30 minutes. If even Netflix, which is todays better TV, can barely compete with Twitch, then you should already know, how big live streaming has become.

Availability:

There is always someone streaming, who fits to your interest. And once you find interest into that particular person, you can usually watch him for more than 6 hours every single day. There is so much content and entertainment created by streamers, it basically can't get boring.

Specific Sections:

The selection of content is astonishing, especially for gaming. If you are interested in any game, you can always find a streamer, who is playing and streaming that game at any time. Also, since real life categories were introduced to Twitch, a lot of people have been streaming themselves doing random things. Some people are traveling and doing live vlogs, others are drawing, playing instruments or just talking to their viewers, which brings us to the next point.

Interaction:

Since the streams are live, the streamer can interact with his audience. Viewers are a part of the stream, because without viewers the streamer wouldn't be able to do all the things he does. Especially because a lot of streamers often do rely on their audience. If they don't receive any questions during their stream, they wouldn't be able to talk as much and the stream would suffer from that.

Free:

You don't need to pay anything to be a viewer on any stream. Every stream is free to watch and even as a free viewer, you give the streamers, who are already partnered money. All you have to do is sometimes watch an ad for a 30 seconds - 2 minutes, which can be played by the streamer. Some streamers don't even play ads, so viewers don't have to watch them. Also on Twitch, if you have an Amazon Prime account, you can subscribe to any streamer for free and you'll get the perks of the subscribtion. And the streamer will still get money from the free subscribtion through Twitch Prime.

Easy to support:

Streamers can be easily supported in various ways by their viewers. If you have a couple bucks to spare, you can either donate it directly to the streamer through PayPal, or just subscribe the channel.

There are also a lot of other ways to support streamers.

Anyone can Stream:

Since it is possible for anyone to be a streamer, you can easily start your own stream and maybe do it as a hobby or a part time job. It is really simple and if you have the right content, you'll get your viewers.

TV was once the most used source for entertainment, but will be surely overtaken by live streaming. There are just too many advantages of live streaming in comparison with TV. Especially because TV entertainment gets worse daily. Too many commercials, shows are mostly bad,because most of the good shows are either pay to view or on Netflix or Amazon.

Live Streaming is the new generations TV and it will flourish even more in the near future.