Substack is trying to turn its writers into streamers

Substack is now letting creators stream live videos as another way to connect with their audiences.

Substack has increasingly been expanding from its roots as a newsletter platform, including by adding Twitter-like Notes posts and the ability to publish video podcasts and even letting people follow other users without subscribing to them. As of last month, you don’t even need to set up a publication to share content. With live video, creators will be able to interact with their fans in real time without having to rely on another platform like Twitch.

When you go live, your subscribers will be notified immediately, and you can make your streams available to everyone, to all subscribers, or only to paid subscribers, according to a blog post. Creators can also bring in another creator to a livestream for a collaboration. Once live videos are done, the recording will be saved to a creator’s drafts if they want to use it in a future post.

The livestreaming feature is currently available in the app to “bestsellers” (or creators with a lot of subscribers), and the company plans to bring it to all Substack users “in the coming months.” If you don’t have the feature yet, you can request early access from Substack.