“Intentional Communities, Good Vibes, Great People”

A Survey of Listeners of Music and DJ Channels on Twitch during COVID

Abstract

When the COVID pandemic lockdown began in March of 2020, the entire world went online to find “much-needed connection in isolation” (Lufkin 2020). Many musical acts took to ‘going live’ on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube to provide entertainment, either formally as sponsored virtual concerts raising money for relief efforts or in the form of pop-ups from home studios. However, those platforms proved unsustainable because broadcasts would be interrupted or taken down if music that did not adhere to licensing agreements was detected (cf. Connaghan 2022). Twitch.tv proved to be more stable, though, and its chat feature allowed for greater and more direct interaction between streamer and listener.

This project is specifically focused on music lovers who tuned in to livestreams on Twitch.tv, first to listen to artists and producers they were fans of beforehand, and then, in the months and years that followed, to listen to the new musical acts (primarily DJs) they discovered along the way. My research draws from survey data collected between Aug. 13 and Sep. 19, 2025, from 184 active Twitch users, 142 of whom stated they purposefully created an account to join the platform during the pandemic after seeing their favorite performers create channels or shift their livestreaming there. Their responses illustrate the ways online communities can shape social belonging, particularly when the streamer fosters a supportive and safe space.

Awareness of the ‘Music’ and ‘DJ’ categories on Twitch, established in 2015 and 2024, respectively, is still not widespread, and scholarship remains predominately associated with gamers on the platform. Therefore, this work offers unique insight to both areas of the platform as well as underexplored demographics, with the two largest age groups represented being 45- to 54-year-olds (108 survey respondents) and 55- to 64-year-olds (40 survey respondents). The genres of music listened to in the channels where I recruited—house, disco, soul, funk, hip hop, and R&B—may skew slightly older, but the qualitative data shows that many continue to tune in post-COVID -because they cannot find similar spaces in their ‘real’ communities to connect with others over music.