Some features take a weekend. Live streaming took a lot longer, and today I finally get to say it: anyone with a Hive account can now go live on 3Speak. No extra software, no stream keys, no third-party service in the middle. You open the website, click a few buttons, and you are on air.
Video on Hive has always been about uploads, but some things belong in the moment: a Q&A with your followers, a gaming session, a walk through your city, a meetup. So let me show you how it works.
🔴 Going live
Everything starts at the Create button in the top bar: next to videos, Shorts and audio there is now a Live column, and Go live! is the one you want. The new Live tab has the same button.
The setup is four short steps. First you decide who can find the stream (public, Hive-only or unlisted) and give it a title and thumbnail. Then come show notes, tags and language.
The third step is my favourite, because this is where Hive comes in. With Boosts on, viewers can send you a paid message in HBD or HIVE while you are live, straight to your wallet. And if 3Speak shares the stream, it is posted to Hive the moment you press Start, in the community you pick, with your rewards and beneficiaries. People can vote on it and comment on it like on any post.
The last step decides what happens afterwards. Tick Replace the stream with a video when it ends and the recording is added to that same post, so the link you shared while live plays the replay once you are done.
Then you open the Stream Studio, a small TV studio in a browser tab: your camera, up to four shared screens or tabs, images, videos and music, a mixer and a few scene layouts. Until you press Start, viewers only see a "Starting soon" screen. Tip: going live works best in Chromium browsers like Chrome, Brave or Edge.
Free and Pro: everyone can stream for up to 30 minutes, once a day. With 3Speak Pro you get up to four hours, 720p, no watermark and going live from OBS with saved templates. You can try Pro free for 24 hours right from the stream setup.
📺 Where your stream shows up
Streams land in Discover, the first feed on Home, as a LIVE card with the number of viewers, and in Following for your followers. Live now sits in the top bar too: the Live page lists every stream on air, plus the OpenPods group chats.
The watch page has the stream, the chat next to it, the top supporters and a quality picker for slower connections. Anyone can watch a public stream, even without an account; to chat you sign in with Hive. Past streams stay on your channel in their own Streams tab, and streaming has its own boards on the leaderboard.
💰 Viewers get paid too
This is the part I am proudest of. Watching videos on 3Speak already earns viewers a share of the viewer pool, and now watching a stream counts the same way: stay at least five minutes, and up to twenty minutes per stream count.
So a creator going live doesn't just get Boosts and votes, they bring their audience something back. Streaming on Hive should feel like Hive, and that means everyone in the room gets something out of it.
✨ And a whole new 3Speak
If the screenshots look different, that's not your imagination. Streams arrive together with 3Speak 2.0, a complete redesign of the website. That story gets its own post: read the 3Speak 2.0 dev update.
Now go and try it. Start a stream, even a short one, and tell me how it went. If something breaks, feels clunky or you miss a feature, drop it in the comments. I read all of them.
See you live! 🔴