The Ultimate Guide to Live Streaming SDK for 2024

So, you like the idea of being able to integrate live streaming into a mobile or web app that your users will love, but you’re not thrilled about the significant development resources it would require to make your live streaming feature a reality.

Well, this is exactly why a live streaming software development kit (SDK) is so helpful. An SDK is built by developers, for developers, to enable all of the interactive features you want for your app or web property – no matter the size of your business or the vertical you’re in.

Read on to learn more about the SDK and how to get started using it in your business.

Table of Contents

• What is a Live Streaming SDK?
• Why Use an SDK for Live Streaming?
  • Improve Audience Engagement and User Experience
  • Expand Opportunities for Revenue
  • Offer Custom Experiences at Scale
• Getting Started with a Live Stream SDK
  • Define Your Project Scope
  • Read Through SDK Documentation
  • Integrate SDK into Your Project
• Introducing MaestroKit
• Make MaestroKit Your Streaming SDK 

What is a Live Streaming SDK?

A live streaming SDK, or software development kit, is a pre-written collection of tools for developers to help add low-latency, high-quality live streaming functionality to applications without needing to begin from scratch. 

The live streaming SDK is a resource that typically includes both pre-built components and application programming interfaces, or APIs, that support the integration of live streaming features into your app or other web property. 

Some of these elements include libraries for video and audio capture, compression, and even interactive elements like live chat or polls.

The SDK is a handy set of building blocks you can work with to make real-time video and audio broadcasting come to life.

Why Use an SDK for Live Streaming?

There are a few key reasons why it’s worth using an SDK to incorporate live D2C streaming into your company’s existing or new mobile app. In this case, let’s use a regional sports league as an example.

1. Improve Audience Engagement and User Experience

First of all, live streaming itself can offer a huge boost in user engagement. In this case of a hypothetical sports league, say they already have a strong fan base, but limited broadcast opportunities. 

By partnering with a live streaming SDK, they can develop a custom app that actually allows fans to watch games live and simultaneously interact with the league through interactive features like live chat, quizzes, and polls. All of this is particularly valuable for a business that wants to cater to a younger and more digital-friendly audience who may be out of reach through traditional media channels.

2. Expand Opportunities for Revenue

When you add live streaming to your app, suddenly there are new opportunities for revenue. It’s one thing to place static banner ads in your app or link out to a product for sale – it’s another to have ads or live shopping within a live stream.

Beyond that, you have the ability to monetize through subscriptions or include the app as a value-add for customers. In the case of our example sports league, it’s easy to do all of the above, adding a subscription option for streaming ad-free live games and monetizing with ads and merchandise sales for all non-subscribers.

While directly monetizing your app isn’t always the right move for your business, it’s worth considering all of the new revenue-generating opportunities at your disposal as you implement engaging and interactive live streaming.

3. Offer Custom Experiences at Scale

One major benefit of embedding live streaming into your app through an SDK is that you can tap into another service’s streaming infrastructure. This includes important features like adaptive bitrate streaming, content delivery network (CDN) integration, and load balancing. 

Beyond just the technical aspects, there’s also economic scalability when you only pay for the bandwidth you actually use. An SDK for live streaming can help you start small with your offering and only grow as your audience grows too.

Going back to our regional sports league example, it could be prohibitively expensive for this organization to launch a fully-featured live streaming service right out of the gate. By using an SDK with a scalable streaming solution, the league can start with more basic streaming features that adjust and grow more sophisticated as their audience grows. 

Getting Started with a Livestream SDK

Now, if you haven’t worked with a livestream SDK in the past, then there are a few steps you need to know about in order to get started.

Keep in mind that this process is just as much a business question as it is a technical question – your goal should be to thoroughly understand the business case for adding live streaming and then go from there.

1. Define Your Project Scope

First of all, it’s important to consider what your user base actually wants from you and define the scope of streaming and interactive features your app will need. It’s not only unnecessary, but potentially harmful for your business to add features that will just cause bloat and ballooning costs.

In fact, this project scoping exercise will help you determine if you need an SDK at all. On a smaller scale, you may be able to implement everything you want with in-house resources alone – but for a more robust live streaming experience, it’ll be valuable to tap into an SDK for app development.

2. Read Through SDK Documentation

If you’ve decided to work with a live streaming SDK like MaestroKit (see below) – or at least find out more about what it can offer – then your next step is to dive into the SDK’s documentation. 

Most SDKs will provide some kind of introduction, getting started, or summary section that offers a rundown of how you’ll integrate the SDK into your application and use its features to create the quality interactive video experiences you’re aiming for.

As part of this investigation, you should make sure that the SDK includes all (or at least most) of the features you need, that it’s compatible with your development environment, and that the documentation and support will allow you to complete the project with minimal delays.

3. Integrate SDK into Your Project

Assuming you’ve considered your business case and gotten familiar with the SDK’s documentation, it’s time to actually start the process of integrating it into your application, web property, or other project. 

In this stage, your in-house developer(s) will have to establish a development environment that plays nicely with the SDK. Watch out for sample code in the reference documentation that can help guide your team in deploying the SDK integration.

Of course, this step doesn’t end until you’ve thoroughly tested and optimized the viewing experience inside your app. Ideally, you’ll conduct all of this stress testing in a test environment and only push it live after you know that it’ll be a good experience for your user base. 

Introducing MaestroKit

Clearly, a live streaming SDK is an invaluable resource your team can use to add real-time video and audio to your mobile app. Now that we’ve talked you through how to research and integrate an SDK, we want to talk to you about the launch of our own SDK, MaestroKit!

This mobile streaming SDK was built from the ground up to help developers and product teams bring the Maestro online video experience straight into their mobile apps.

There are two simple ways to implement MaestroKit:

1. You can enable your users to go live from their smartphones with vertical TikTok/Instagram Live-like video with just a tap.
2. You can use the tech to add interactivity to your mobile streaming experiences. 

Currently, our streaming SDK comes with a built-in live chat – additional interactivity features like tipping and shopping are on the way.

Ready to get started? 

You can consult with MaestroKit’s step-by-step documentation to incorporate this technology into your workflow – or invest in hands-on software development from the highly experienced engineers here on Maestro’s team.

Whatever you need to make your app’s streaming capabilities a reality, we’re here to help! It’s available for iOS, Android, and web applications.

Make MaestroKit Your Streaming SDK

By working with a streaming SDK like MaestroKit, you can transform your mobile app to offer a quality, interactive live streaming feature. Ultimately, an SDK will allow you to provide a much better experience for your users at a fraction of the development time and resources.

Please contact us to learn more about MaestroKit.

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