Communities For Musicians

Connect 
Your audience will come to Twitch to watch you showcase what you do best, but what keeps viewers coming back are interactive, community-driven experiences.

Even if you’re in the midst of a live performance, taking a break once in a while to catch up with chat, respond to questions, and keep the conversation going will keep your viewers engaged. For many of your most dedicated viewers, these breaks are what makes your stream feel personal, unique, and authentic.

Most importantly, make sure to show love to the viewers who support you. Calling out cheers, new subscriptions, and followers will let your audience know you see them and their support really matters to you.

That doesn’t mean you have to stop everything the moment someone follows your channel; most broadcasting software lets you configure alerts that display special messages on your stream when viewers follow or subscribe. Many music streamers will take breaks between songs to catch up on acknowledgements and see what their community has been chatting about during the performance.

For more tips on how to connect with viewers and get them to stick around, check out our article on New Viewer Retention .

Set The Tone
As long as you keep things safe and follow the Terms of Service, you can build whatever kind of community you want on Twitch. Some are sensitive and kind, others are witty and sarcastic. Most are a little of both. It’s up to you and your moderators to lay down your ground rules and set the tone of your chat. Your channel is a reflection of who you are as an artist, so take the time to think about how you’ll be presenting yourself and your personal brand to the world.

Choosing a few trusted followers or friends to act as Moderators for your channel is highly recommended. Mods keep your community safe by banning unpleasant chatters and removing abusive or off-topic messages.

Moderators are important for maintaining a safe and positive community, but they can do much more than just keeping your chat clean. Your mods can help you remind users about upcoming events, greet new visitors, and keep the chat moving while you’re performing.

If you haven’t found the right mods yet, you can still keep your chat safe by enabling Automod, which will automatically flag and remove unwanted chat messages before they appear.

You can find more details in our Moderation and Safety overview.

Collaborate
When musicians come together and collaborate, there’s nothing else like it. On Twitch, it’s easy to network with artists and find new friends, collaborators, and fans.

Ending your broadcast with a raid is a great way to build connections with other streamers. Raiding lets you send all your viewers to another live channel when your stream ends. You’ll not only introduce your viewers to music you love, but you’re also sharing your audience with another musician. Good raiding etiquette is to stick around for a little while in the channel you’ve raided and say hello.

It’s also super easy to do. Before you stop streaming, use the /raid command in chat and share a message you want your viewers to send in the new channel. Raiding is one of the most effective ways to keep your audience growing and engaged, so give it a try on your next stream. If you raid other channels, they just might raid you back.

Check out our help article on raiding to learn more.

Get Help

Need help getting your stream set up? Our https://discord.gg/vyjyzhS on Discord will let you connect with experienced music streamers.