YouTube Confirms Live Streaming Service Will Only Be For Content Partners

Earlier today, in a conversation with YouTube, a company spokesperson confirmed that YouTube's live streaming service, which they have been testing for the past two days, will only be available to content partners when the service rolls out "in the coming months". The service will not be available to non-content partners and average YouTube users. The company did not detail how many partners will have access to the service or how a content owner meets their partner criteria. YouTube's decision not to open up the live streaming service to everyone probably comes as no surprise as it's clear that YouTube wants to help premium content owners monetize their live streams.

The company also confirmed that the live streaming is taking place across YouTube's network with no support from any third party CDN and that the technology has been, "built from the ground up by YouTube engineers". While it's really too early to know exactly what the service will look like when it launches, from what I could tell of the testing over the past two days, the streams are being delivered via HTTP and encoded for 640×360 at 1500Kbps. It will be interesting to see what kind of ad options YouTube offers with the live streaming service since pre-roll and overlays tend to be the wrong kind of ad formats for live streams.