This is a bit of great news for those looking to live stream inexpensively (FREE) an event without annoying pre-roll or overlay advertising. YouTube, which has been experimenting with live streaming in various stages since 2008, has lowered the threshold to qualify to use their YouTube Live streaming service. As of Friday, YouTube account holders only need to have 100 subscribers to their channel and be in good standing to use the new live streaming features. If you can’t get 100 subscribers, then you should be probably just leave the Internet.

A quick rundown of the features that make YouTube Live so compelling:

• Completely free live streaming with no advertising (unless you want it, then you can opt-in to revenue share)
• Supports up to 1080p HD streams at 6Mb/s
• Multi-bitrate transcoding – encode one HD stream and other bitrates are automatically generated and offered in player (1080, 720, 480, 360, 240)
• Mobile/tablet support (Android & iOS)
• DVR feature – automatically rewind to an earlier part of a live broadcast
• Automatic recording of live event (up to 4 hours in length)
• Detailed real-time analytics
• Free desktop encoder software – Wirecast for YouTube

To get started, log into your YouTube account. Go to Channel Settings -> Features. Scroll to the bottom and you’ll see a line that says Live events.  Click the button that says Enable next to it. If you don’t see Enable, keep checking back as YouTube is rolling out Live gradually to handle the expected load.  See the YouTube Live Streaming Guide for more info.  Happy streaming!