Been a while since I posted my Pepega takes, so here we go, very fresh one too. Affiliate status is something that is very hard to get on Twitch, but now you can get it by just investing pretty small sum of money in music service subscription.
Obviously reaction to that was pretty negative overall, not a huge shitstorm, but a lot of upset people and a lot of messages to other streamers asking them to give their take. Well here’s mine…
Some intro info: Monstercat is a music label, that provides special license-subscription that allows content creators to use their music without copyright claims and all that for pretty reasonable price of 5$/mo and their library is pretty nice for electronic music fans. Copyright claims for music is something that happens a lot on Twitch recently and DMCApocalypse is something everyone is talking about a lot recently, so Monstercat collaborated with Twitch, giving everyone who subs for their license instant Affiliate status on Twitch. To get affiliated you need to stream for 8 hours per week, reach 50 followers and have 3 average concurrent viewers, then you get basic access to all features partners have just in limited format.
So what’s all the ruckus about? First of all, affiliate is not hard to get, I know some people who just got it to have their own emotes that they can use in other chats for free, but for some people road wasn’t simple, so they just don’t like that this move “devalues” status of affiliate. Problem here is that affiliate status is already not valuable, since there is insane amount of affiliates and many are getting it easy left and right, then also “main” Twitch streamers have such huge numbers that it overshadows all the requirements for affiliate by a mile, making it look like nothing to some average viewer who’s not familiar with smaller streamer life. When you go to TwitchCon for example, affiliates are pretty much the same as regular visitors, just one extra word on the badge that gives nothing and means nothing.
It can sound mean and who I am really to talk about affiliates when I got express carried to partner status by Ela and his community’s love, but fact is still there – Affiliate status means nothing, it’s all about your channels and effort you put into it, if I hear that someone is affiliate it means nothing to me, if I see them putting work in and streaming regularly – that is status. You see I’m a partner myself and what does it change? Any big streamer is also partner, so we are same status technically, but there is a huge difference, because I’m W H OMEGALUL even with a check mark. Platform just became huge, so just statuses are not enough anymore to figure out who’s who and partner status probably will stop meaning much in the future too or we will get some new “tiers”
Like I heard on Asmon’s stream yesterday “they are selling the boost, but to level 10 only” and that’s pretty much it, out of 100 they boost you to 10, which is easy to reach anyway and you still have main trip ahead left, so it’s not a big deal at all. If you can’t make it to 10 yourself, then buying it won’t change anything, getting that affiliate status doesn’t bring you money, doesn’t bring you viewers, does pretty much nothing in terms of your stream.
So what do I mean by all that? First of all, I think like in pretty much any other internet business, affiliates are mostly just “register and get it” – you get your link to attract customers to attract sales on stuff you promote and you get your share of profits, Twitch affiliate status is kinda the same, only thing Twitch loses by giving affiliate status to everyone is work hours of moderators, who approve emotes that affiliates add and such stuff. That kinda requires some “commitment” that would separate just random people who want to add their own emotes to use from others, that “commitment” was requirement to stream a bit and to a very small audience, now they offer a substitution in having a subscription that is also used in content creation. I think it’s somewhat fair if we forget about “statuses” that I discussed above, also allows someone who for example already has other platforms in work to join Twitch with less friction – bring their audience and instantly start monetizing and customizing their channel. In my opinion it should be completely open to everyone, just get your sub button and try streaming, see if you can make it work for yourself with no entry barriers, but then as I said they need to moderate emotes and many people probably would use that just to add some emotes to use themselves in other chats and not to actually stream, so that makes just free for everyone option a bit worse.
Anything negative I see there? Well, it is a bit of integrity loss from Twitch, just the fact of adding such financial shortcut is a bit sketchy step and slippery slope potentially, so I can understand some of the ruckus for sure. Another thing that is kinda scary is that now after reading all those Pepega “reports” and charts about insane affiliate incomes there might be a bunch of people who will just get that subscription, get affiliated and will be sitting there like “yo, where’s my money now, it doesn’t work”, potentially after investing in some dank setup and gear too. But guess that is more on those people, you always need to do your research and think moves like this through and through.
Other than that I think that a lot of people are overreacting, many because they took some time to get affiliated and now they are mad that others will get it easier. Well that’s a very bad approach, it’s like when people suffered through some bad law/rules and when it’s about to be reformed for better they are mad that others won’t need to go through what they did – doesn’t mean that everyone needs to go through same, times changing. Pretty sure a lot of partners were mad, because back in a day there were no exact requirements, at some point it was like 200 viewers average and you needed to contact managers to try to get partnered, many went through multiple rejections and in my time I just got to 70 average, pressed the button in my dashboard that became active and got partnered in next wave (we were in one wave with Cb, they do a lot of people in one go). But things change, all I have to say is that we all need to keep working on our channels and communities, because that’s what defines us and not some statuses.