Shykurobooo – Musician, Singer, Dancer and Gamer Shares Her Ups and Downs with Livestreaming

Tell us your history with music and video games 

I am a Master Graduate in Music, specializing in collaborative piano. My first instrument is piano, which I started learning at the age of 7. I am from a typical asian family where piano lessons are compulsory. I took piano lessons from many different teachers throughout my musical journey. I don’t learn from anyone now; in fact, I am now a piano teacher. Other than piano, I learnt violin up until Grade 7, and self taught guitar and ukulele just recently this year for my stream.

My favorite instrument is piano, which I have played for my whole life. I love singing and dancing, although they are not my forte. I have been gaining singing experience from choirs and also singing regularly on stream.

I started my dancing journey in 2017 when I decided to join a dancing performance organized by a college club. Then, I started to make dance covers with friends on YouTube. After I finished my study, I joined a dance studio for a year, and even got chosen for a few competitions. Dancing activities stopped since the pandemic started, but I am so glad to be able to dance occasionally on stream.

I am a very casual gamer, but I have played games since I was very young. I am mainly interested in shooting and fighting games. However, the most addicting game I have ever played was O2Jam.

What’s your backstory and how did you get into streaming?

I started off as a game streamer, Overwatch was my only content for my first year of streaming. Then slowly transitioning into a variety streamer who tries many other games, and now finally a music streamer. I find it challenging to find suitable content for myself. That's why I have been changing my content a lot for the first 2 years. I tried to find the balance between what viewers enjoy watching versus what I truly enjoy doing. I did not know about Twitch at all before I started my streaming journey, it was introduced by my boyfriend and gaming friends. They showed me this opportunity and thought it might be something I could explore.

I was a nobody with zero streaming experience when I first started. I started off very casually without much thoughts, and just stream whenever I play games with friends. I was pretty shy at first about streaming but so lucky to get some big donation support from the very beginning, and also encouragement from my small community, and I thought it might be great to go on and explore more on streaming. 

Tell us about your channel and community

My content is currently 80% music, 20% games and variety. I love and adore the music community, they are generally very positive and welcoming. Music community is very well connected, fellow music streamers are very supportive as well. The only game I play is Valorant at the moment, and I play it occasionally off stream.

I play with my viewers a lot, mostly with my subscribers where we have an exclusive channel for subs on my Discord server. Discord is the best place to hangout with my viewers whenever I don’t stream; we have weekly hangout sessions to watch movies or play games together.

Tell us about your brand and how you’ve been able to obtain success

I did not purposefully create a brand persona, I would say my persona developed and cultivated along the way. I am still true to myself, but at the same time I have self-awareness to be more uplifted and positive on stream so I can create a comfortable space for everyone.

I found it hard to grow my community when I did gaming streams in earlier days. My channel started to grow steadily when I put more thought into it, for example improving my communication and engagement skills, improving my stream profile and overlays, upgrading my gears and equipment, and watching other people's streams. Then afterwards, my community grew immensely after I focused on doing music this year. I guess I finally found my strong suit which is to showcase my music talents. I am glad the feedback has been very positive from viewers, and I enjoy doing it as well.

My biggest achievement is a successful 24 hours subathon, and also receiving more than 800 subs in a month. I am always in awe of how much support people have given to me. The biggest challenge is to grow my community and maintain the viewership. It took me 3 months to get Affiliate, 2 years and a half to get to Partner. It is definitely a long journey but I am glad how it turns out now, and how this nurtured me into a better streamer. I am also grateful to some loyal viewers who stayed throughout despite my drastic changing content. I am unsure about taking this as full time yet, even though I am investing most time into streaming now especially during this pandemic. I will see what is best for me along the way but hopefully I will do this for a very long time, as long as my supporters are still here with me.

What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve ever received from a viewer?

Best piece of feedback I have ever received is probably mentioning the comfortable and good vibe my stream is giving, and my multi-talent on playing piano, guitar, singing, dancing, and drawing.

What’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to you because of your streaming?

The most interesting thing happened to my stream is a rare visit of a 3-million-followers big streamer moistcr1tikal who gifted me 50 subs and featured my piano playing of Nier Automata’s “Amusement Park” in his YouTube video.

How do you balance streaming and your day-to-day life?

I stream 5 hours on average per stream, 3 days a week. During my days off, I spent most of my time doing things to improve my stream - emotes/alert/overlay/songlist etc. I also invest a lot of time on managing social media, mostly active on Instagram and Twitter.

One of my daily routines is rewatching my Twitch VOD for possible video content for my YouTube channel. I also spent some time watching other people’s streams and connecting with each other. I miss going out meeting people, but now I am very much accustomed to this streaming lifestyle of staying at home. I kept it very low profile when I first started streaming, I hid it from all my friends and family because I worry they might react in a negative way. I opened up about my streaming after I started music streams, and gladly I received many supportive words. My parents worry that my streaming career might affect my profession as a piano teacher in the future, but they are happy that I am doing well on stream that compensates for the job I have lost during this pandemic. I think this is a possible maintainable lifestyle for another year or so, I hope to continue doing it even after the pandemic ends.

Tell us what tools you use for your stream

The tools I heavily rely on for streaming are Streamlabs OBS, Streamelements, Nightbot, and StreamerSonglist. Discord is the best place for my community to stay connected and hangout with each other whenever I don’t stream. I draw and create all my overlays and emotes and badges, but after I reached Partner I commissioned a few artists for starting scenes, stingers, and animated emotes. My favourite extensions are BTTV emotes and Sound Alerts, but I disabled sound alerts on music streams. I don’t usually check channel analytics, but I do pay attention to the view counts and chat activity to make better decisions.

Which 3 streamers inspire you the most?

1. pealeaf - I enjoy her piano and singing performance a lot, and how she can play anything out of her head. I added some songs to my song list after I listened to her performance.
2. supercatkei - I love her bubbly, friendly, and humble personality. I love the way she interacts with the chat that makes people feel comfortable and easily engaged.
3. ChewieMelodies - His piano playing is always so skilled and mesmerizing. Watching his stream inspires me to be better as a pianist.

What are your top 3 streaming tools? 

1. Streamlabs OBS
2. Mirrorless Camera
3. iPad Pro

What advice would you give to small channels trying to reach Partner? 

Build a community! Be nice and genuine to everyone, be grateful and content with whatever support you received. Wisely analyze yourself and choose your content that will be good for both of you and the viewers. Streaming is a long grinding process, be prepared to put your passion and dedication into your stream.

If you could change one thing about Twitch, what would it be?

DMCA. It is pretty frustrating and confusing when we get striked by DMCA out of the blue that restricts us from playing most music on stream. This is affecting my dancing stream too.

What are your plans for the future? 

My current goal is to improve my streaming gears to a more professional level and grow my community. Hopefully in 5 years I can be an influential music streamer that represents Malaysia, or Asia. I am interested in collaborating with streamers for special streams, and also plan to do more variety streams not just limited to music. I wish to do some charity streams to help people in need. Ultimately, I wish to be a good representative of music streamers that brings people comfort and happiness.