Twitch Posts Biggest Growth as Result of COVID-19 Lockdown

The Twitch streaming platform is seeing tremendous growth in its music category, as millions of locked down viewers spend hours tuned to music videos.

Actually, the COVID-19 lockdown has spurred an increase in Twitch viewership across all categories. Whereas before the pandemic crisis, gaming was the most widely viewed category at Twitch, the lockdown made the Music & Performing Arts channels the biggest growth contributor to the live streaming platform. According to data provider Quartz, the category grew from 92,000 viewership hours in March 08, 2020 to 574, 000 hours in March 22, 2020.

As of this writing (May 15, 2020), viewer hours for contents streamed by Insomniac has reached 1,544,457, putting the electronic music promoter’s channel at the number 1 spot of the Most Watched LIst in the category. Lostlands, follows as the second most watched with 1,102,665 viewer hours. Beatport Official completes the top three most watched list by coming in third with 740,710 viewer hours.

Twitch “Just Chatting” also contributed as many as 134 million viewing hours. A good turnout for the streaming platform and its efforts to grow non-gaming channels. StreamElements CEO Donor Nir said the “Just Chatting” category has consistently maintained an upward trend since launching last year, posting a growth rate of 36%.

Riot Games Boosted the Twitch Game Channel with Valorant Promo

Still, the gaming channels at Twitch have seen a lot of activities. Thanks to Riot Games and its “drop ticket” promotional invites, which gave Rioters a chance to participate in the closed beta testing of Riot’s forthcoming Valorant. Viewing any of the games live-streamed by the Valorant beta gamers for at least 2 hours, is tantamount to dropping 1 raffle ticket that can increase a Riot- linked account’s chances of receiving an invite to participate in Valorant’s beta testing.

As expected millions flocked to watch live-streamed videos at the Valorant channel, which according to Twitch broke all records of “single-day hours watched” when as many as 34 million hours were recorded. Moreover, the game peaked at a concurrent 1.7 million in viewer total, a record seconding the hit made by the 2019 League of Legends World Championship.

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