YouTube has had its live-streaming feature available for everyone since December of 2013, after having lifted its 100 and 1,000 subscriber requirements in August and May of the same year, respectively. YouTube 360° Videos came a little later in March 2015. Put this two together, and now you have YouTube 360-degree live streaming, complete with spatial audio.
With YouTube 360° Videos, from athletes to brands to musicians, these creators have whipped up a lot of creative and spatial videos. YouTube has also been live streaming Coachella for years, since 2011 to be exact. With these two services merging, Google has brought 360-degree live streaming of select artist performances at the 2016 Coachella, from several different spherical camera stands. The Coachella content can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/user/coachella.
The best part is, Google and YouTube also noted that since anyone can already live stream their own content, or upload their own 360-degree videos, this new YouTube 360-degree live streaming is also available for virtually everyone. Sure, you can use professional-grade 360-degree camera setup like the epic NextVR, but a consumer-centric device such as the Ricoh Theta S or the upcoming Samsung Gear 360 will suffice.
As mentioned earlier, Google also took the opportunity to launch spatial audio for “on-demand” YouTube videos. On-demand is another way to say that live-streamed 360-degree videos are not supported for the time being, probably due to bandwidth constraints. But spatial sound is really something; because the pair of microphones are shaped like human ears it is able to capture depth, distance, and intensity, all you need to do to enjoy is to listen to them with a pair of decent earphones. Embedded below is a playlist of 360-degree videos with spatial sound. Unfortunately, spatial sound doesn’t work on iOS or the web, but only on Android for now.
Google has been working with several companies across various industries to continue making better 360 content; two of them are software companies called VideoStitch and Two Big Ears that are already available and compatible with YouTube today. Google will also make available its 360-degree live streaming and spatial audio technologies available at all of its YouTube Space locations worldwide, for content creators to have access to them easily.
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