Lives

A live is you, on camera, with people watching and talking to you in your own room on BackstagePass. The same show can play on your social platforms at the same time. When you cut those feeds, people on the socials see a card with a link to your room, and the show carries on in your room.

A live can be a lesson, a Q&A, a concert, or an hour with your community.

Go live, step by step

1. Tap GO LIVE at the top of the studio. You can also open Studio → Lives and tap Create new live.
2. Give the live a title and a short description, so people know what it's about. Add a cover under Cover media: an image or a video, up to 20MB. 16:9 works best.
3. Under When are you going live?, pick Now or Schedule. For a scheduled live, set the date, the time and about how long it runs.
4. Under Who gets in, pick Free for followers, Pass required or Ticket.
5. Open Advanced settings and choose who hears about it under Who hears about it.
6. Under Choose destinations, turn on the other platforms this live plays on. Your BackstagePass room is always on.
7. Tap Continue. You're taken to the control room. Nothing is broadcast yet.
8. Turn on your camera. If you have a guest, they wait in the Greenroom panel. Tap Bring on stage on their card when you want them on.
9. Tap GO LIVE. Your room opens and the platforms you picked start playing.
10. The people you told get a push notification or an email saying you're live.
11. Fans come in from your live's link or from that message. Anyone already waiting in the waiting room comes straight in.

Schedule a live

Pick Schedule in step 3 and tap Schedule it at the end. The live goes on your Lives board, and it gets its own page where fans tap Count me in, add it to their calendar, and share it. When you schedule it, your followers are told it's coming, and reminders go out before it starts, unless you picked Don't notify anyone. Automations controls which reminders are on.

When it's time, open the live from Lives with Control room, or tap Join now at the top of the studio, then follow steps 8 to 11. GO LIVE turns on 30 minutes before the start time.

The length you set is a guide, not a cut-off. The live ends when you tap End, or when no host has been in the room for 10 minutes.

Who gets in

Free for followers is free to come in. Pass required lets in people who hold the Passes you tick. Ticket charges a price for this one live. You set the price, and you can cap the seats and include the Encore. Members of any Pass you tick get in free. Passes are set up in Box Office; the Passes how-to covers it.

Who gets told

Who hears about it has three main choices: Only people who can get in, Everyone who follows you, and Don't notify anyone for a test live. Nothing goes out for this live: no Live scheduled, no reminders, no cancellation notice, no GO LIVE push or email. On a free live the first two are the same, because anyone can come in. The Notifying card beside the form shows how many people will get a push and how many will get an email. Those are the people told when you tap GO LIVE.

Destinations on this live

Each platform you've connected shows as a round toggle under Choose destinations. Tap to turn it on or off for this live. The + opens Destinations in a new tab to connect another one.

TikTok and LinkedIn take a new stream key for every live. In the control room, open the Destinations panel, or click the platform's icon next to Ready on. A platform that still needs its key says Needs today's key. Paste the URL and key from that platform and tap Add. If a platform has no key when you tap GO LIVE, it's skipped and the rest of the live goes out as normal; LinkedIn asks first, with Add LinkedIn's key or Go live without LinkedIn. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and X use the key saved on Destinations. The Destinations article covers connecting each one.

Cut the socials

Once you're live, CUT THE SOCIALS switches every social feed to a card with a link to your room. Your room keeps the show. Restore social feeds puts the show back on the socials. The button only shows on a live that is playing on at least one social platform.

Bring a guest on

A guest can be someone already in your room or someone you invite.

• Someone in the room: open the Participants panel, tap the menu beside their name, and choose Make Panelist or Make Co-host.
• Someone not here yet: open the live's page from Lives, go to the Crew tab, enter their name and email, and tap Invite a guest. They get an email with a link that only opens for that address.

Either way they wait in the Greenroom panel under Backstage, where you can talk to them in Private Chat. Bring on stage puts them on screen. Take off stage takes them off again.

Chat

The Chat panel in the control room is the room's chat. Before you go live it's the waiting room's chat, and it starts closed. The gear opens Chat settings, where you turn chat on or off, set a cooldown between messages, and turn reactions on or off. Each message can be pinned or deleted. The Moderation how-to covers how chat is looked after for you.

End the live

Tap End and then End for all. The show stops for everyone, on every platform. You land on the live's Report tab, and the replay becomes its Encore. The Encores how-to covers what happens next.