How to stream 24/7 to YouTube without OBS or a PC
Upload your videos or music to CastLoop, add your YouTube stream key and press Start. The stream runs from our servers, so OBS, your PC and your own internet connection can all be off.
Step by step
- Create a CastLoop account. Every new account gets a 7-day free trial, no card needed.
- Upload your videos as MP4, or your music as MP3, M4A or WAV together with a JPG or PNG cover image.
- In YouTube Studio, open Create → Go live → Stream and copy the stream key. If you've never streamed before, enable live streaming first; YouTube can take up to 24 hours.
- Press ＋ Add stream in CastLoop, tick YouTube, paste the key and confirm the channel is yours. The dashboard shows you how.
- Choose what plays: one file or all of them, shuffled or in order, forever, once or for a set number of hours. Add a daily schedule if you only want to be live at certain times.
- Press Start. You can close the browser once the stream is live.
OBS on your own PC compared with CastLoop
| OBS on your own PC | CastLoop | |
|---|---|---|
| Your computer has to stay on | Yes | No |
| Uses your home upload speed | Yes | No |
| PC restarts, sleeps or updates | Stream stops | Not affected |
| Cost | Free software, your own hardware and power | $6 per month of live time |
What keeps the stream live
- If the connection to YouTube drops, we reconnect automatically.
- A watchdog restarts any stream that hasn't sent data for two minutes.
- If YouTube stops showing a stream we're still sending, we reconnect so it picks it up again.
- Each stream has an Activity log in plain English and shows its uptime.