Tutorials Streaming

How to Livestream a Podcast

Intermediate · ~50 min

Overview

Livestreaming your podcast conversation builds a real-time audience and repurposable video clips, without sacrificing the broadcast-quality edited episode your regular listeners expect. The trick is running two separate capture layers at once: a compressed live stream, and an uncompressed local recording per guest.

What You Need

A remote recording platform that also supports live streaming out (Riverside.fm, Streamyard, or SquadCast + OBS)
OBS Studio if you're compositing the visual layout yourself
A stable, ideally wired, internet connection for the host

Steps

Choose your recording layer

Pick a platform that records each participant locally on their own device (Riverside.fm, SquadCast) rather than over the call itself. This is what gives you a clean, uncompressed multitrack file for editing regardless of anyone's connection quality during the live stream.

Choose your streaming layer

Most modern remote recording platforms (Riverside, Streamyard) have a built-in "Go Live" button that pushes a compressed feed to YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook simultaneously via RTMP. If yours doesn't, route the platform's output into OBS as a Browser or Window source and stream from there.

Confirm each guest's audio is captured twice

Before recording, run a 1-minute test and confirm each participant's local recording file is populating (most platforms show a small recording indicator per tile) independently of the live stream's audio.

Build a simple video layout

Keep the live layout simple: a grid or picture-in-picture of hosts/guests, plus a lower third with names and titles. Elaborate overlays are a distraction from the conversation, which is what's actually driving retention.

Run both layers together

Start the local recording first, then go live a few seconds later. This makes it easy to trim the recorded file to match your intended episode start without cutting into pre-roll setup chatter.

Edit the multitrack recording separately

Once the stream ends, download the local multitrack files and edit those for your podcast feed, not the compressed livestream capture. Clip the livestream VOD separately for short-form social content.

Pro Tips

Tell guests up front that the session is being live-streamed: it changes what some people are comfortable saying, and it's a basic courtesy.
Schedule a short pre-show buffer (5 to 10 min) before you go live to catch connection or audio issues without burning your actual episode content.
Repurpose the livestream chat, viewer questions during the stream often make excellent segments or follow-up episode topics.

Knowledge Base

Why Two Layers, Not One

A live stream is inherently compressed and at the mercy of the weakest connection in the call, great for reach, bad for audio fidelity. A locally-recorded multitrack file is uncompressed and immune to anyone's internet hiccups, great for editing, but useless for real-time audience building. Running both means you don't have to choose.

Platforms That Do This Well

Riverside.fm and StreamYard both support "Go Live" directly from a recording session, streaming a compressed composite to YouTube/Twitch/Facebook while separately capturing each participant's local track for later download. SquadCast focuses purely on the recording side and pairs well with OBS for the live layer if you want more visual control.

Managing the Two Timelines

Your live audience experiences the conversation in real time with no edits. Your podcast audience gets the trimmed, cleaned-up multitrack edit days later. Keep a simple log of timestamps during the stream (a great intro moment, a tangent to cut) so editing the multitrack version afterward goes faster.

Where This Fits

This guide covers one specific part of podcasting. The wider picture. The whole setup from equipment and recording through editing, publishing, and handling remote guests, is in Best Podcast Setup for Beginners, which frames the discipline as a whole and links out to the detailed guides underneath it, including this one. If you are starting from scratch rather than solving a specific problem, read that first and come back here.

FAQ

Q: Will my podcast sound worse because I'm also streaming?
A: No, as long as you're editing from the local multitrack recording, not the livestream capture, audio quality is unaffected by the stream happening simultaneously.

Q: Do I need separate microphones for streaming vs. recording?
A: No, the same microphone feeds both layers. The recording platform captures the raw signal locally while separately sending a compressed version to the stream.