For my sins (or lack thereof) I ended up playing with OBS studio, which was politely waiting for an input stream, and offering me all sorts of options. I frankly had never strayed beyond http & ftp

There was at least 100 streaming sites, including 4 youtube offerings. I gather most offer the RTMPS protocol, and don't seem to include the big names - disney, hulu, hbo, netflix.

Discounting the many that are porn, and foreign language, what are the rest? Some news I suppose. I'm wondering what would motivate someone to open a streaming site.

There's gaming streaming sites like Twitch...

Exactly what is the purpose of this thread? You saw a list of streaming sites, which you didn't post, and you want us to describe each one to you?

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <General> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Aah, of course.

I didn't want a description, just classification. The web is there, but streaming by it's nature is time sensitive, isn't it?

Streaming sites can be monetized and many so-called "influencers" are making major bucks by weekly streaming for news in specific areas, reviews of every kind of product, tutorials and much, much more. I saw a post (on Reddit iirc but expanded on YouTube with a dedicated video) from a 16-18 year old teenage boy who had posted a video casually and then forgot all about and a year later was shocked to receive a check for around $1000 from YouTube. Apparently YouTube has made their rules a bit more restrictive but still many are making amazing incomes and even more just strong supplemental incomes from streaming.

For reference I've been so far really neglectful and have yet to expand into tutorials on how to mix digital audio and recover lost tapes while converting to digital but one audio clip I posted on YouTube has received over 500 views in 9 months and that's with no video. If you'd like you can hear it here -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2zaciTyzmg

It's just a nightclub live mix (safe for all ages) I mixed down from a badly stored 30+ year old cassette tape. The response has me learning DaVinci Resolv, OBS, and Reaper to try to grow my channel to include unique audio electronics design and maybe one day actually make a few bucks.

I had a listen, but it was too early in the day for me to enjoy that. It's a podcast, right?

So they are (fee paying) smaller versions of youtube on specific topics?

Hello again business_kid. I don't think the few clips on my channel qualifies as a podcast since AFAIK those are commonly recorded live chats. Then again there are lots of very similar terms like "blog" and "vlog" that have considerable overlap but "a rose by any other name", right?

From my POV it's all about channels with some manner of coherent theme of content. Here's one I'm subscribed to that should interest you any time of day called "EEVblog channel" that is strictly about electrical engineering theory, application, and hardware reviews.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymJc5oxthlw

IIRC he has published regular clips on his channel for well over a decade and has achieved nearly one million subscribers. His income must be very substantial by now.

I use several streaming sites. Some streaming sites other folks share with me. My daughter lets me use her Disney Plus account and a buddy lets me log-in to his Plex TV server. I pay for Netflix and Paramount Plus. I let my daughter use my Paramount account. I was able to password share on Netflix until they cracked down on that in Canada. So far Disney and Paramount have not cracked down on password sharing in Canada. Given the fact that Netflix had a very profitable last quarter I expect Disney and Paramount to crack down on password sharing as well.