A Recap of TwitchCon 2022
This year’s TwitchCon in San Diego, California, marked the return to IRL meets for streamers from all over the world. The event at the San Diego Convention Centre was scheduled to host more than 90,000 attendees over three days.
Twitch CEO and co-founder Emmett Shear held a keynote speech talking through some upcoming features and improvements to the platform:
- The payout threshold in the US has been halved (from $100 to $50), allowing streamers to receive commissions earlier.
- Twitch Charity allows streamers to more-easily raise money for charity without having to handle payments themselves.
- Guest Star makes collaboration on Twitch much simpler. Streamers can easily invite up to 5 guests onto their stream with both video and audio, without having to do any complicated window capture.
However, the event was marred with controversy over concerns for attendee safety when Twitch streamer Adriana Chechik broke her back in two places because a foam pit wasn’t deep enough.
Elgato Launch an XLR Microphone
Elgato announced the Wave DX, an XLR microphone that uses a dynamic capsule designed with Lewitt Audio.
This is the first Elgato microphone to go down the XLR route. Both previous mics (the Wave:1 and Wave:3) are USB.
I’ve been testing the Wave DX over the past few weeks and have overall been pretty impressed, especially when factoring in that it’s priced at $99.99.
Some notable features of the Wave DX:
- The wide-cardioid polar pattern is forgiving for creators with less-than-perfect microphone technique whilst still doing a decent job of rejecting sounds that aren’t in front of the capsule.
- A moveable swivel mount allows the microphone to be used with any kind of mic stand/boom arm.
- The microphone’s body and mount feel well-built.
- Dual-layered pop filter helps deal with plosives.
In my review, I do a bunch of tests to evaluate how the microphone deals with plosives and off-axis speaking. Most importantly I compare it with some other dynamic XLR microphones around the same price like the GoXLR Mic and the RODE PodMic.
YouTube Changes to YPP and Shorts
YouTube recently announced some revenue changes on its platform, specifically for Shorts creators.
A key change to the YouTube Partner Program is that beginning in 2023, Shorts-focused creators can apply to YPP once they get 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views in 90 days.
Additionally, from early 2023, YouTube will be running ads between shorts. Creators whose shorts are shown between these ads will earn a share of the revenue (around 40-45%) based on the overall watch time, and creators will still be allowed to monetize shorts that use music.
Lastly, YouTube announced Creator Music, a new feature coming to YouTube Studio that will remove the complexities of accessing quality music for content creation.
A creator can either buy an affordable license for a particular song and keep all the revenue from their content or agree with the artist on sharing the revenue generated from the content.
