Serato is giving away a whole host of free visuals that DJs can use to make their livestreams visually (as well as musically) exciting. Their use is not tied to Serato DJs, and the visuals can be added as “static layers” in any half-decent livestreaming software (most DJs use OBS, as it’s free).
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“Streaming DJs are responsible for music and the entire visual experience. It’s an exciting new creative challenge, but doing this well is difficult, so we thought we’d help.” says Scotty Hoogerbrug, Chief Marketing Officer at Serato.
“This meant, all for free, we made a huge range of visuals to make your set look dope. The needs of a DJ are different from your average streamer so our creative team went deep to ensure we’re on point.”
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Some of the scenes available are “Rococo Mansion”, “Nuclear Vibes” (“no drugs or weapons”- we like it!), and “Enchanted Forest”. There are also a host of DJ booths, from speaker stacks to alien monsters.
For DJs choosing to stream on Twitch, Serato has also announced a Twitch extension that can take the music you’re playing on Serato on your laptop and feed it into a banner on your livestream, allowing you to shout out the artists and producers you’re featuring in your streams.
• Click here to go to the free visuals, and click here to get the Twitch extension, and here for Serato’s guide to using and configuring it
Our Thoughts
It’s cool to see Serato offering something back to DJs in these testing times – although of course, it remains to be seen how common these free backdrops will become, and if that will diminish their “wow” factor over time.
We’d expect Serato to keep adding to the range, and who knows, one day they may even charge for premium overlays.
As far as Twitch goes, it’s interesting to see big companies like Serato and Beatport going in heavy on the platform. Twitch was traditionally a gamer’s platform, but seems well suited to music/DJ streaming, and Twitch appears to be not only encouraging these companies, but actually working with them to make this stuff possible.
It is particularly intriguing because as of the time of writing this, Twitch is not licensed for music, and artists featured on Twitch streams are not getting paid as they should be, unlike on Mixcloud and YouTube, where licensing is in place (although your stream can still get kicked off YouTube if the licence holder so desires).
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Our guess is that the record labels and Amazon (which owns Twitch) are in active negotiations to legitimise this kind of activity. Serato itself has become a big player on Twitch, with many Serato artists featuring heavily in Serato’s programming there, and the likes of Serato and Beatport would not be doing this if they felt long-term it was the wrong place to be.
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Our advice for DJs wanting to livestream on Twitch remains the same: Use the platform if you like, but do not attempt to save your livestreams there, as they will currently be full of muted sections.
Phil Morse
