YStation, update 1: Joe Rogan made me do it

👉 https://youtu.be/w7QblYLCNfs 👈

YStation (code name) is an idea that stems from my watching the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Joe has so many episodes, I can never decide which to watch 😳. In the end, I normally choose a guest I recognize because it makes me more confident investing an hour or two (or four in the case of recent Posty interview 🌈). I wondered, how many interesting guests could we laugh with, learn from, and aspire to that we may never discover due to our high inhibitions? For all the benefits of on-demand, I regret not being able to tune in and out as I please like I could with a radio station. It'd be nice to have a familiar station without always having to start at the beginning or follow through with my commitment to a previously-selected episode. I'd love a way to serendipitously discover new guests and topics without having to battle my inhibitions.

So, I had this idea to download all Joe Rogan episodes, stitch them together, and stream to a semi-private YouTube channel that I could tune into most mornings on my FireTV or in the car through YouTube Premium. Then I felt anxious about infringing a four-time taekwondo champion's copyright! "Anyway", I thought, "couldn't Joe benefit from a scheduled or even a nonstop YouTube live stream?"

His channel would appear in youtube.com/live and feature a "Live" badge, drawing more viewers:

Through YouTube Live, he could easily monetize his old content through mid-roll ads:

When you have a nonstop stream, it's like adding a chat room to your YouTube channel where the JRE community can hang and, as mega fans frequently do, donate.

In my linear way of thinking, I then realized that Joe Rogan is not the only podcast I listen to. Moreover, are music-based YouTube channels like ChilledCow riding an emerging wave of "24/7 music streams"? In ChilledCow's case, their lofi hiphop radio boasts 40,000 live viewers around the clock. In which other verticals would this make at least some sense?

So here's where YStation comes in or, could come in, I should say. The aspiration for YStation is a service that YouTubers sign up to. YStation will then download all their YouTube videos and present options to schedule an uninterrupted live stream of some or all videos. By entrusting YStation with their YouTube stream key, YStation can autonomously broadcast according to their options, allowing them to increase the velocity of their YouTube channel (views, subscribers, revenue from donations and mid-roll ads).

I write "here's where YStation could come in" because I am resisting the temptation to dive head-first into code. I have to admit, I am excited to build an ingestion server, most likely use ffmpeg to stitch downloaded videos together according to the user's preferences. I am curious to know if ffmpeg can function as a production-level rmtp client or if I'll need an alternative solution! But to rush into solving a problem before I have validated that it's a real problem would be naive and wasteful. Inspired by The Lean Startup, I wish instead to form a hypothesis and, drawing on my marketing and development knowledge, validate it as efficiently as possible. That is what YStation video update 1 is all about.

👉 https://youtu.be/w7QblYLCNfs 👈

Feel free to skip to 2.45 as int he first few minutes, I more or less explain what I have already here.

Update 1 summary

• Step 1 is to identify your riskiest assumptions so that you validate them first. I use Notion to create a matrix based on risk and effort
• Then, form a hypothesis (or hypotheses). A hypothesis a single, written, testable statement of what you believe to be true. The objective of an MVP experiment is to validate a hypothesis
• Should I...
  • Build the landing page and collect only emails?
  • Build a landing page, invite users to signup and build a concierge MVP? In a concierge MVP, I work one-on-one with a limited number of customers to ensure I am solving a real problem and better understand how prospective users tick, such that I can build a generalized solution
  • Should I build the complete product and "fu** it"?
  • Or, should I entertain a Wizard of OZ MVP, where I present the user with an ingestion interface then, unbeknownst to then, do all the work manually behind the scenes?