For Its First Birthday YouTube Live Is Giving Us Free Software, Analytics And Monetization Tools

Just in case you've forgotten it exists, YouTube Live has announced that it turned one year old this weekend. And in the greatest engineering tradition, they're giving us some presents. (Of course, "us" currently refers only to YouTube partners with permission to stream live.)


Wirecast for YouTube Live software "is free for YouTube partners and allows you to produce and stream professional-looking live events directly to YouTube from your desktop."


Secondly, you get access to "a guided flow to set up and preview live events before you go live." You also get more analytics data like playbacks and concurrent views by geographic location.


While cool software and more data is all fine and good, the real star of this announcement is the new ability to monetize live streams. Creators can finally turn a buck on their shows by including ads or other paid options.