Vimeo Acquires Livestream – Meet Vimeo Live

Acquisition

by Olaf von VossSeptember 28^th, 2017

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New York-based video platform Vimeo has acquired Livestream, a well-known hub for hosting and managing live video feeds. The resulting offspring is called Vimeo Live. What does this mean for our fast-paced, content-driven industry? Let’s have a look.

Vimeo Live – Stream Your Event Straight to Vimeo

In a world of growing demand for fresh content, this latest business move by Vimeo seems to be a smart one. The acquisition of Livestream and the resulting launch of Vimeo Live enables users to live-stream their favorite events in full HD (1080p) straight to Vimeo. After the broadcast concludes, it is saved and published as a regular video to your collection. If your original video feed was 4K, that resolution will be applied, even if the livestream is limited to 1080p. The necessary transcoding (4K to 1080p) is applied in the cloud, but you can also use your own encoder of choice if you like.

All the tested and trusted Vimeo tools are there, too. You can customize your player, embed it and view real time stats. A live chat feature is also available. All this comes at a price, though. Vimeo Live is available as an upgrade from the Pro and Business tiers. A basic (free) membership or a Plus one won’t do it.

Vimeo PRO Live is a whooping $75 per month ($20/month without the Live feature). This includes 5 hours of live streaming per month. If you want more, you’ll need to purchase a BUSINESS Live subscription for $300 per month, which includes unlimited streaming hours but limits individual events to a maximum of 5 hours. For a complete list of features, check out the Vimeo Live website.

What About Vimeo on-demand?

Before the launch of Vimeo Live, the company had another milestone in mind: video on-demand . As it turns out, that never happened, but I think this acquisition is a far better idea than the former plans. With industry giants like Netflix or Amazon Prime, the competition would be just overwhelming.

But there’s more to it. Vimeo has always been eager to see itself as a high-quality video platform with creators in mind – filmmakers, creative professionals and hobbyists alike, but always with a focus on meaningful, artistic and visually stunning content. YouTube, on the other hand, was more of a general purpose hub for all kinds of moving images. In terms of quality, Vimeo was top-notch.

Well, times are changing. While all the above stays true for Vimeo, the ratio between beautifully-shot mini documentaries and cat-video compilations on YouTube has diminished drastically. More and more quality-content YouTube channels are being established while Vimeo seems to struggle a bit with delivering satisfying tools and features. The reach of new videos uploaded to YouTube is far superior – one of the reasons why we at cinema5D moved all our new videos over to YouTube.

Also, there is one other thing worth mentioning: YouTube is free to use when it comes to video uploading or live streaming (at least in terms of money – the value of your personal data is a whole topic on its own). The same goes for Facebook’s set of live-streaming tools. Vimeo’s path is a different one, as they will charge you good money if you want to make use of all the features and if you need a big storage capacity. The killer-feature here: it’s ad-free.

YouTube and Vimeo obviously have completely different business models. It’s up to you to decide which one better fits your needs.

Link: Vimeo Live website

Are you a Vimeo content creator? A YouTube star? What is your opinion on this business move by Vimeo? Share your thoughts in the comments below!