YouTube is opening up its live streaming service to anyone with 100 or more subscribers, putting smaller, independent creators on the same footing as larger productions. The announcement comes less than three months after YouTube lowered the bar on live streaming to channels with 1,000 or more subscribers. The company says that access to the feature is being handed out gradually, so if you don’t see the “Enable” button for YouTube Live on your account features page, it suggests you keep checking back.

In other YouTube news, smaller creators are also getting the ability to add custom thumbnail images to videos, link out to online stores or other sites in their videos’ annotations, and place viewers inside video playlists — all features that were previously off-limits for ordinary users. As with live streaming, it could take some time for these to roll out, but if you’re curious about how to implement any of the new stuff, YouTube has some extensive documentation over at its Creator Playbook site.

Source: TheVerge