Newsletter service Substack starts offering live video broadcasts feature

Substack, a popular newsletter service, is now evolving. The company now announced that it will be adding a live video component to its newsletter service, and will provide real-time audience engagement for creators.

Initially, the feature will be available only to people with Substack's Bestsellers badges. However, the company said that it has plans to roll out the feature to all users in the coming months.

So basically, creators can now begin live videos within the Substack app. Just like with written content on the platform, a creator can set whether the audience for a live video is everyone, all subscribers, or paid subscribers. Of course, subscribers to a channel will be notified when a live video begins.

There's also the option for collaboration, which basically means you can invite other Substack members into the live broadcast. For now, only users on iPhones can issue such invitations, Android users can only accept an invite for now. Of course, they will be receiving access to the full feature "soon".

After a live broadcast ends, a recording will be saved in post drafts. This will make it possible for you to send the video in a future newsletter. You also get a clipping tool for light video editing.

Substack isn't particularly positioned as a social media or as a simultaneous video-sharing platform such as TikTok. Email communication is usually asynchronous, which means emails can be read whenever it's convenient for the recipient, and not really meant for live interactions. So it will be curious to see how the new feature will be taken up from current Substack users.

I personally think that it is definitely interesting to have such a feature available for creators. I would probably watch a live video from the creator of my favorite newsletter if such would be available, but in all honestly, I may be following the creator somewhere else on social media and expect to see live videos over there. We'll have to wait and see if Substack users will use this feature enough for it to be worth it, but hey, you never know what catches on!