What a live stream is

A live stream on EchoLive is a real time video broadcast from one creator to an audience of any size. Nothing is pre-recorded. When a creator goes live, their camera and microphone are captured on their phone, sent to our streaming infrastructure, and distributed to everyone watching within roughly a second. That short delay is what makes the format work. A viewer can type a question and hear the answer before they have finished reading their own message.

Each live broadcast happens in a room. The room contains the video, a running chat, the list of viewers currently watching, and the gifting controls. When the creator ends the broadcast, the room closes. Live is genuinely live, so unlike a video library there is nothing to come back to later unless the creator has posted clips to their short-form feed.

Watching a stream

You can browse EchoLive without an account. Opening the app or the website puts you into Discover, which is where every live room and every clip surfaces. Discover is organized into four views:

• New shows rooms that have just gone live, including creators with small audiences. This is where most people find someone they had never heard of.
• Trending shows rooms gaining audience quickly right now.
• Following shows the creators you follow who are live at this moment.
• Battle shows active PK battles and popular battles, so you can drop into a contest already in progress.

Tap a room and you are watching. To participate, you need a free account. An account gives you chat, the ability to follow creators, notifications when the people you follow go live, and access to gifting.

One thing worth knowing about discovery: gifting activity is not used as a ranking signal. A room does not rise in Trending because someone spent money in it. Ranking is driven by genuine audience behavior such as how many people are joining, how long they stay, and how much they interact.

Going live

Any account holder who meets the age requirement can broadcast. From the app, tap the create button, choose Go Live, set a stream title, pick a cover image, and start. There is no follower minimum and no approval queue for basic broadcasting.

A few practical notes for new creators:

• Your title is your advertisement. It is the single line a viewer scrolling Discover reads before deciding to tap. Describe what is actually happening in the room.
• Vertical, landscape, and front or rear camera are all supported. Most viewers are on phones, so vertical usually performs better.
• Connection matters more than camera quality. A stable connection at moderate resolution beats a high resolution stream that keeps rebuffering.
• Appoint moderators. Creators can assign trusted viewers as moderators, who can then remove disruptive comments and block users on the creator's behalf.

Creators who intend to earn from broadcasting have an additional step. Before any funds can be withdrawn, a creator must complete identity and age verification. Details are on the How creators earn page.

Chat, follows, and gifts

The chat runs alongside the video and is the main way an audience talks to a creator and to each other. Creators control their own rooms. They can mute a viewer, remove a comment, block an account, restrict chat to followers, and hand moderation authority to others.

Gifts are the other form of participation. A viewer buys Echo Coins inside their account, then sends a gift during a stream. The gift plays as an animation on screen and is credited to the creator as earnings. Gifts range from small and frequent to large and rare, and the animated ones are deliberately loud, because part of what a viewer is buying is a moment where the whole room sees them.

Gifting is a monetized feature and is restricted to verified adult accounts. Watching and chatting are not.

PK battles

A PK battle is a timed head to head contest between creators, judged by their audiences. It is the most distinctive part of EchoLive and worth understanding in detail.

When a battle starts, the participating creators' streams appear on one screen at the same time, with a shared scoreboard running above them. Viewers in either room can see both creators. Gifts sent to a creator during the battle add to that creator's score. When the clock hits zero, the higher score wins.

Battle modes

• 1v1. Two creators, one scoreboard. The classic format.
• 2v2. Two teams of two. Team scores are combined, so coordination between partners matters.
• Three way and four way. Three or four creators competing simultaneously, each with an independent score.

Battle formats

• One and done. A single round decides it.
• Best of three. First to win two rounds.
• Best of five. First to win three rounds.

Round length

Rounds can be set to one, three, or five minutes. One minute rounds are frantic and favor a room that can mobilize instantly. Five minute rounds reward creators who can hold attention and build momentum. Three minutes is the most commonly used setting.

Scheduled battles and Battle Rank

Beyond spontaneous battles, creators can schedule matches in advance. A creator posts a challenge specifying mode, format, and a day and time. Another creator accepts, and the match moves to the scheduled list where viewers can see it coming and plan to attend.

Scheduled battles feed Battle Rank, a fifty tier competitive ladder. Wins move a creator up the ladder and losses move them down, and the system uses rank to match creators against opponents at a similar level rather than throwing a new creator at a veteran. Battle Rank appears on battle cards, on battle leaderboards, and as an accolade on a creator's profile. Only scheduled battles count toward it, so casual in-room battles stay casual.

Once a year, sixty four creators enter Clash of the Creators, our annual single elimination tournament, played out over a week of daily rounds.

Web versus the app

The two are not identical, and it is worth knowing which does what.

Capability	Web	App
Watch live streams	Yes	Yes
Browse the short-form feed	Yes	Yes
Chat and follow	Yes, signed in	Yes, signed in
Buy Echo Coins	Yes, on echolivenow.com	Directed to the web
Broadcast live	Not currently	Yes
PK battles	Watch only	Watch and compete
Go-live notifications	No	Yes

The short version: watching works everywhere, broadcasting is an app feature, and coin purchases are handled on the web at echolivenow.com.

Behind the scenes

Live video at low latency is harder than it looks. EchoLive runs on a purpose built real time streaming stack, with global content delivery so a viewer three time zones away from a creator gets the same responsive experience as someone in the next town. Streams adapt automatically to the viewer's connection, stepping resolution down rather than stalling when bandwidth drops.