Beaming To The Public
Beam has opened to the public but, with several exceptions. When you go to sign up for an account, you are presented with two options. One is to continue as a viewer, allowing you to watch and interact with the current streamers on the platform. The other option is to become a streamer on Beam.
My thoughts are that this would be a rather normal experience in getting started streaming on a new platform. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. After the account creation, you are presented with three tiers. The free tier is where you'll need to wait a bit longer on a waiting list for Beam Free to be available. The problem at least in my case, is that when you click on the Join Waiting List, nothing happens. Tried this on a few different browsers and even a different OS, same result.
The next tier is their Beam Premium. For $3.95 you'll receive all the Beam advanced features. They also mention that if you already have an audience elsewhere, you don't have to leave them behind while you work on creating a community on Beam. With this tier, the button works by presenting you with a modal window to enter your payment details. Of course, this one works.
The last tier is a sponsored one. You can choose from a list of sponsors (there only being one at the current time of this article) The sponsor will have their logo displayed on your channel page and a short video ad may occasionally play before or during your stream. You'll also need to stream at least 4 hours per month, otherwise you'll not be able to choose a sponsor next month.
When looking at the site I received an email from Teodor Atroshenko, CTO of Beam. The email was a simple email verification one that one would receive from any service or platform, ok. Clicking the link you are sent to BeaconMAX, which is I guess part of their overall business setup. The thing is that they're offering a free three-month trial for the BeaconMAX program at $10 a month. Of course, I'm confused about why would I need to do this for email verification. Add in the fact within the Beam site the premium tier is at a much lower rate, what am I being offered here and is it necessary to stream on Beam? Already getting some confusing and very conflicting information right off the bat with this new service.
I did find the RTMP settings and managed to do a test stream. Everything seemed pretty bare bones, which is to be expected for a service that had just been released to the public. The issue is that yes, while I was live on Beam, my channel name was just a string of random letters and numbers. I'm guessing that I don't have a fully active account. Makes sense I guess but it would be ideal in that I was informed about this from the onset. Maybe even deny my stream with a box, warning me that I am unable to stream? Again, I tried to see about joining this waiting list but, the button does nothing and continues to provide no information. I'm sure they'll fix this but for now, it's a big roadblock for anyone potentially wanting to try out this service.
Beam does have an interesting concept though. There is a shop where you purchase a few game titles. This is where I noticed that there is marketing for the BeaconMAX that if you were a sub to that program, you would receive a discount on those game purchases. Again, I don't know who the BeaconMAX is marketed to as creators wouldn't need those services, as they've probably already had something similar for less or even free. Viewers definitely wouldn't need BeaconMAX and there isn't much of a compelling reason for them to sign up to get a small discount on a few games. Looking past this, I can see how a streamer could entice their viewers to purchase a game via a link on their channel or for someone to gift a game, yes that is a thing in Beam. Something like this was possible over on Twitch a few years ago but, was dropped for some reason.
I do have to say that the site layout is quite nice. A random channel will be prominently displayed in the center and on the left of that, is a listing of the service's top streamers. The bright red live flags are a great touch within the listing. Navigation is placed on the far left to find your followed feed and the category listing. Beam does have this neat feature that allows you to multistream another channel at the same time you are watching another stream. Essentially the same as having two tabs open at the same time but, it's built-in to the service. Visiting the homepage turns off this feature but, going to a different channel it comes back. I haven't seen something like that elsewhere though.
The experience is similar to any other service or platform with a few customizations. You can change the color of the chat bubbles background and the color of the text itself. This appears to be just on the client side, which is a cool quality-of-life feature.
Other than the confusion with BeaconMAX and why I would need it, Beam has a decent site. This is something I'll have to spend some more time with and hopefully get access to the free tier to see what the limitations are but, overall, if you want to try out another live streaming service, I would say it won't hurt to try out Beam.
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