The online video streaming company Stickam.com today introduced a beta version of a paid service, PayPerLive, which will allow users to charge for access to their live streams. Basically, Stickam’s new service allows anybody to set up a pay-per-view service, while Stickam handles the business back-end. With this new service, Stickam is specifically targeting consultants, bands, teachers, and fundraisers. As for costs, Stickam will implement a tiered revenue-sharing program, starting with Stickam getting at 25 percent cut of the profits.
Monetizing live streams this way looks like a perfect fit for Stickam, which only recently announced the availability of higher quality, high-definition streams. While its competitors like Justin.tv, Kyte, or Ustream are mainly financing themselves through advertising, Stickam, we think, is making a smart move by opening up a second revenue stream here.
PayPerLive could easily become the de-facto standard for bands who want to broadcasts concerts live as a pay-per-view event. The success of this service, however, will depend greatly on the quality of the video, but also the audio stream. If our experience with watching Leo Laporte’s steams on TWIT is any indication, though, Stickam should do just fine.
Still, paying users tend to be a lot more fickle than those using a free service (and those can be quite fickle already), so part of Stickam’s challenge will be to provide a stable, high-quality service that doesn’t go down or stutter in the middle of a concert or consultation session.
