Did you see AOC play AmongUs on Twitch a few weeks ago? What about Billie Eilish’s live concert? If you’re like me, you probably have major fomo because you missed both of these live and only heard about them after the fact. And we’re not alone — more than 60% of viewers are missing out on content on a weekly basis (source: Lightspeed Consumer Survey).

Live content is rapidly becoming the most entertaining form of content today, yet discovery is a major bottleneck for creators and consumers — it’s nearly impossible for consumers to find what they want to watch, when they want to watch it. Content is now spread across a myriad of different platforms — from Facebook Live, Instagram Live and YouTube Live to more verticalized platforms like Twitch.

With an increasing proliferation of content and distribution platforms, we believe there is a venture-scale opportunity for better discovery tools in live streaming. To understand this opportunity, we launched a Lightspeed Consumer Survey (N=500) to learn more about live viewing behaviors and the emerging problem of discovery. In this post, we’ll share our learnings from the survey and elaborate on the opportunity for new startups to create better streaming solutions.

The evolution of live

Over the last decade, our dominant form of content consumption has evolved from static posts to stories. And now we’re seeing the next evolution — a shift from planned content to real-time live and unedited content.

Live content is the most entertaining and engaging format for viewers because it’s intrinsically interactive. Creators can play games with viewers, give shout-outs, and host Q&As. The element of spontaneity and unscripted nature enhances the emotional experience and creates a heightened sense of connection. The live format adds urgency to the creator’s message, which is often timely with current events and has the potential to become part of pop culture.

We asked viewers what they like most about live content and graphed the answers below. As you’ll note, viewer preferences are largely consistent across age groups, with younger consumers preferring more unscripted and interactive content.

Why now?

The dominance of live content is made possible by increasing internet speeds and mobile broadband standards that enable anyone to ‘go live’ at any time. Large social media platforms offer intuitive and free user interfaces for live streaming, meaning no special technology or skills are required to broadcast to large audiences.

Beyond technology advancements, COVID has rapidly accelerated the adoption of live viewing, as creators look to monetize their talents remotely and consumers seek new and entertaining content. Of the consumers we surveyed, 85% watch live content today, and 70% of those that watch live content say their viewing has increased significantly since the onset of COVID. DJ D-Nice was one of the first creators to serve an at-home COVID audience with his afternoon DJ sets, which were overwhelmingly popular at the beginning of the pandemic.

The big bottleneck

Most live streaming is occurring on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Other vertical-specific platforms like Twitch (gaming), MomentHouse (music), and Newness (beauty) are emerging. With so many platforms, each with their own siloed discovery tools and notification systems, it’s difficult for consumers to find relevant live content to watch. Most legacy platforms only feature what’s ‘on now’ and only notify viewers if someone they follow is live. The newer verticalized platforms have better tools, but less content, so often viewers need to plan ahead.

We asked our survey respondents how they most often find live streams to watch and their responses were spread almost evenly across a few answer choices (see below), which suggests that there is no dominant method for finding live content today. Accordingly, viewers are missing content they wish they had seen on a regular basis — and as mentioned above, more than 60% of survey respondents who watch live content say they miss-out on content on a weekly basis.

This discovery problem creates a bottleneck for creators and consumers — while there is a ton of great content being produced, it often goes under the radar because consumers simply aren’t able to find it.

The opportunity

There is a big opportunity for entrepreneurs to create better discovery tools and platforms for live content. Specifically, we see an opportunity for the ‘TV Guide of live’ — a resource that would index live streams across all platforms and rank according to popularity by genre or category of content. Similar to Netflix, the algorithm would learn consumer preferences and be able to recommend upcoming content. The longer-term ‘big vision’ would be for this platform to evolve into the ‘Netflix of live’ over time, as it gathers data and build relationships with creators and their viewers.

We’ve seen a few very early stage players emerging in the live discovery space over the last few months. Some offer comprehensive discovery across verticals (e.g., Via.Live and OnNow), while others focus in on a specific vertical or demographic (e.g., YourLiveGuide and StreamTime). We’ve also noticed that some streaming platforms are creating their own tools. For example, Zoom recently launched OnZoom, a marketplace-like interface to discover immersive Zoom-based experiences. While platform-based tools are helpful, we believe a comprehensive cross-platform discovery tool will provide the greatest utility.

To build this cross-platform discovery tool, startups need to invest in building 1) technically complex scraping and aggregation technologies and 2) a robust recommendations engine. Lastly, startups should consider embedding interactive and social features to generate network effects to further propel growth.

We believe better discovery tools will boost the entire live ecosystem and will unlock further content creation, as creators will be able to reach large and engaged audiences. There is a similar parallel here with iPhone apps. Once the app store came along and allowed for discovery, we saw explosive growth in apps because creators could finally reach their audience.

A successful platform will be one that can always answer to “what’s on now?” and “what’s coming on this week?” When a tool like this exists, we can stop worrying about missing out on the next live stream and simply plan ahead.