Instagram to consider monetizing live streams

With artists drawing huge audiences to their Instagram profiles with live content, the organisations VP of Product is considering monetising their live streams.

As we have all likely seen for ourselves, the on-going COVID-19 pandemic has brought DJs to heavily focus on their social media output, with many in particular favour of DJ live streams. Instagram is one of the platforms to see in influx in the number of live streams, and a recent Twitter thread has caught the eye of Instagram’s VP of Product Vishal Shah. In the conversation the monetisation of Instagram Live was suggested by users, and it has been confirmed that Vishal already had this concept under consideration. Monetisation is the process of (an artist) earning money from uploaded content by enabling ads to feature on/around it. Video streaming service Twitch already does something like this with its platform of (mainly) gamers utilising the feature to make money through their content.

If you are not already familiar with Twitch, make sure to head over there with visual festivals becoming a frequent concept during these times. As for Instagram, it will be interesting to see if, when and how these monetising ideas develop over the coming weeks, and with artists away from touring at the moment, Instagram live streams could become an alternative, quick-fire way of generating income. To make more income and grow lots of followers, you can use photography hashtags, however.

Instagram Live has seen @torylanez pull in 200k concurrent viewers and @jamesblake pull 30k, but it offers no tools for monetisation.

In a post-pandemic world without touring, many of our favourite artists need to find new revenue sources.

Some ideas on how IG Live could help? pic.twitter.com/NBFxZrz50Y

— neer (@thisisneer) April 8, 2020

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