[SOLVED] Stream to YouTube Live from Mobile Without 1000 Subscribers

One of the biggest issues with YouTube Live Streaming is that you cannot stream from your mobile phone until your channel has one thousand subscribers. Yes – you need 1000 subscribers on your channel before YouTube lets you stream directly from your mobile phone. Here is what YouTube’s support page says about it –

To live stream on mobile, your channel will need to have at least 1,000 subscribers. 

Note that this eligibility threshold does not apply to other live streaming tools. Creators who have less than 1,000 subscribers can still live stream through a computer and webcam. 

This is quite a big limitation for live streamers because hand-held mobile streaming is convenient and required in some circumstances. Plus, mobile streaming to YouTube is cheap – all you need is a good quality phone and optionally, a ring-light for lighting.

So, does this mean that you cannot stream to YouTube from your mobile until you get 1000 subscribers?

Nope! There is a work-around to this problem that I shall talk about in this article.

By the end of this step-by-step tutorial, you should be able to stream to your brand-new, zero-subscriber YouTube channel from your mobile phone (Android or iOS) – no need for a thousand subs!

Btw, if you are a live-streamer, or you produce live events for your school, college, church, or music band, then check out our Top 12 Ideas for Immediately Improving the Quality of Your Live Streaming for a huge impact!

What are you waiting for? Let’s get going, shall we?

Step 1: Enable Live Streaming on your YouTube Account

The very first thing you need to do is to enable live streaming on your account. To do this, log on to YouTube and click “Create” and “Go Live” from the top-right menu. If it is your first time live streaming, you will need to agree to YouTube’s terms and conditions first. Then, you’ll need to wait 24 hours before live streaming is enabled for your account.

So, complete this step quickly and come back after 24 hours 🙂

Step 2: Install StreamLabs app on your mobile phone

Now, go to either the Google PlayStore for Android or the Apple App Store for iPhones to download and install the StreamLabs app onto your phones. This is the app that we shall use in this tutorial to stream from your phone to YouTube Live.

Step 3: Connect StreamLabs app to your YouTube account

When you open the StreamLabs app, you get the login screen that prompts you to log in and provides you several options – Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, Periscope, Picarto, or a custom RTMP.

Click on the YouTube icon and sign in with your Google account. This should give the StreamLabs app access to your YouTube account which it needs to be able to stream directly to it.

After you sign-in, the app will ask you what you will be using the Streamlabs app for? In our case, let’s choose the first option – “Stream Yourself” using the mobile phone’s camera and microphone

Next, give the Streamlabs app permission to access your phone’s camera and microphone.

Then, the app is going to ask you where you want to broadcast to. We signed in using our Youube account, so let’s stream to YouTube. The app provides us three options for YouTube streaming –

1. Stream to an existing event
2. Start a scheduled event (an event that you scheduled using the browser interface)
3. Or create an event and start it.

Let’s choose the 3rd option and start a new event.

Enter the title of the event and an option description. I chose Public access – but you can make it private if that’s what you’re looking for.

In the next few steps, let’s see how to start and stop a YouTube live streaming session!

Step 4: Start Streaming to YouTube Live without 1000 Subscribers

In the previous step, if you hit the “Go Live” button, the Streamlabs app will start streaming to YouTube, and this will bypass the 1000 subscribers rule for streaming on YouTube via mobile phones. Great, right? You can see my streaming session in the image below – and I have only 10 subs!

After you’re done streaming, you can hit the “Stop” button and end broadcasting.

The Streamlabs app also gives you the option to finish the event or let it remain active. This is a useful option if you are planning to switch from mobile to another streaming source. For example, you might want to stream from OBS Studio to YouTube, as described in this article.

Conclusion

YouTube is such a great service for Live and VOD streaming. Millions use it daily to watch videos that others uploaded or to upload VOD content or live stream. I hope this post helps you in live streaming from your mobile phone to a YouTube channel that does not have 1000 subscribers yet. After you get 1000 subs, you can switch to streaming from YouTube’s app directly.

If this was useful, please comment and share this article with your friends so that they can start streaming on a new YouTube channel as well 🙂

Until next time, stay safe, and happy streaming!