After I was denied Twitch partner application (again) in under an hour (not even enough time to really have more than one person read my application) I looked long and hard at YouTube again, or even making my own server. There seems to be a wave of people leaving Twitch for all the right reasons. In the end, however, Twitch is still best for live streaming and YouTube is best for saving VODs and videos.
Twitch mutes VODS. What seems like an advantage at first is actually a big negative. Muting a VOD means that unless you have the video recorded somewhere you have no version of the video that is not muted.
Twitch VOD exports reduce quality. By pushing a VOD from Twitch to YouTube there is a significant quality reduction and anything that has been muted carries over without any indication of why there is no sound. This is just absolutely unacceptable to anyone who cares about the quality of their saved, searchable videos (which should be everyone).
YouTube demonetizes VODs with music but doesn’t mute them. Submitting a video with music in it from an external speaker, or otherwise, only causes that video to have copyright notices and have the money redirected to the “copyright holder.” The music is still included, however. This is perfect for outdoor hiking and music performance streams where even a cover band will cause the video to be demonetized.
YouTube messaging for live chat is abysmally bad. YouTube messaging system depends on polling an API endpoint for the most recent “page” of chat messages resulting in tremendous lag. It also completely fails to show about 20% of all chat messages. None of us know where they go. They just get dropped entirely. YouTube messages are limited to 200 characters (Twitch is 500) and don’t allow custom emotes. YouTube command message take forever to respond.
Real money doesn’t come from monetized videos. The biggest money comes from donations, merch, and other direct support. Monetized videos on YouTube are no longer a viable means of making money by themselves. In other words, you should care that your videos are monetized, instead focus on producing more content so that people maintain a connection with you that they value and reward you in other ways. When a video does need to be monetized (say the Boost) then make sure that one is clean.
Twitch chat is based on IRC. Twitch chat can be easily used by anyone with an IRC client. This also means that bots are very easy to make and maintain. It means that messages come in a stream from a concurrent connection rather than in pages like YouTube. This also means that anyone can post anything to the IRC without the stream even being on. This is essential when using things that control the turning on and off of a stream like NoALBS for remote stream management. YouTube has nothing like this at all.
Twitch is best for music and audio. Twitch has a very rich music community including DJs playing copyrighted music without VODs that could never, ever be streamed to YouTube. This means if you want to play DJ during coworking time the only place to do that is Twitch. YouTube will never allow that. Since music is such a huge part of the live streaming experience for everyone (“Twitch is an audio platform with visual distractions” as one member put it) there is no way that “party” atmosphere will ever be possible on a YouTube stream.
Twitch pays more, on average. Twitch simply pays more than YouTube for live streaming content, even if not partner.
MEE6 does not notify of live stream to Twitch. Even though it isn’t that hard to make one’s own bot to do notifications, the biggest live stream management bot, MEE6, has only minimal support for YouTube in general. It does, however, notify if a new YouTube video has been posted.
Viewers can watch multiple Twitch streams simultaneously, not YouTube. There are already a ton of tools and sites for concurrently watching several live Twitch streamers. This doesn’t exist for YouTube and likely never will.
Twitch discovery and community building is better. When I thought of leaving Twitch I was immediately distressed by the family of other streamers I have built up that I have come to know about and really appreciate through raids and such. There is a tight bond between Twitch streamers that just does not exist between YouTube streamers (the few who are there). Hell, I got a job on Twitch that I would never have gotten through YouTube streaming.