The Sunday livestreams – how can we continue?

We actually don’t know where to put this article: it’s not really news, it’s not a background article, nor a review or a “videocast” item either. Still, we think it’s important to bring up this topic, because it remains a big issue: what are we going to do with the live tests we’ve held on the last Sunday of the month for almost 5 years?

It was a bit of an “Alpha Signature” item: the live-stream tests on the last Sunday of the month. We reached a lot of readers and viewers with that. And also won the hearts of a lot of international viewers with it. Still, at some point we decided to put these on ‘hold’ for a while. For several reasons.

Time and money

In a way, these reasons also tie in with each other: it just takes a lot of time. Coming up with topics, requesting the products, the preparation (burn in, looking up specs, researching the background of the product, etc), but also building up and breaking down the stream technically, editing audio for samples, returning products, etc, etc… Such a 2-hour live stream takes at least a couple of days….

And during these days your author cannot do anything else. And that caused a lot of overtime in busy times. Also on weekends when ‘normal people’ are relaxing in the garden with a nice drink, snack, barbecue… That’s not a bad thing as long as it makes some money, because let’s also just be honest: Alpha Audio also just has to make money.

And there’s the next point: we didn’t make any money (we actually lost money). Yes: during Covid it did make some money… Because back then it was an ideal channel for importers to get exposure for new products. But now, many importers spend this money again on fairs and other things. And that’s fine: they get something out of that too. But in this case there are consequences: Alpha Audio cannot just spend so much time and money on something that doesn’t make any profit; we are sure you understand that.

So how to do it?

Now, that’s the billion dollar question! There is a demand for these streams from you – the readers and viewers. We have rarely had so many requests to bring an item back. And make no mistake: we, too, find it super fun to do.

Now the thing is that a stream like this just costs quite a bit of money; there are three guys sitting on a couch on a Sunday doing a test. Add to that a few extra days as explained above and you understand that this just costs quite a bit to organize. We have to be able to make this financial room before we start. This money has to come either from the Alpha Audio community or from the importers. Or perhaps from both?

The question in that sense is a bit: how badly do you – the reader/viewer – want this? Are you willing to pay a Patreon subscription of 5, 9 or 15 Euro to revive these streams? To give you an idea: if we get to 350 paying subscribers, we can pick this up again after the summer vacations…This is also a sustainable model that benefits you and us. Do you think that is a reasonable proposal? Do you have other ideas? Let us know in the comments.