Electro-Pop Artist HANA’s Secrets to Livestreaming Success

For the foreseeable future, livestreams are the only safe way for people to congregate and experience music together. Over the past couple of weeks, everyone from Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard to Charli XCX to Swae Lee has started relying heavily on the technology to keep connected with their fans. One artist who was way ahead of the quarantine curve is Los Angeles singer and producer Hana Pestle, aka HANA, best known for her collaborations with Grimes.

HANA created her account on Twitch two years ago and has since broadcast more than 700 hours of her life through the popular livestreaming platform, which is mostly used by gamers. She livestreamed the making of her last album, HANADRIEL, over the course of a month last fall, and now has nearly 10,000 followers, who have watched her Twitch videos for 54,000 hours in total.

During a typical streaming session in her L.A. home studio, she does everything from music production to gaming to just hanging out, with streams lasting anywhere from 15 minutes to 13 hours. Dropping in on her broadcasts feels like poking your head into a friend’s window to see what they’re up to; yesterday, she filmed herself exploring the art of pickling. After some of her IRL shows were cancelled earlier this month, she took to Twitch for a series of social-distancing streams. And when she released the music video for her single “Anxious Alien” last week, she celebrated by putting it on loop while conducting a casual livestream Q&A. No matter what she’s doing, HANA talks to her viewers the entire time, checking her chat feed and greeting regulars.

Speaking to Pitchfork from self-isolation, HANA explains how she plans her streams, what equipment you need, and more.

Pitchfork: What are your fans most interested in seeing from you on your livestream?

HANA: Music creation gets the best feedback. I’ve got this Tibetan singing bowl that I’ll sometimes harmonize with for these weird, sound bath-esque streams, which I’ve been doing a lot of lately, because it’s really relaxing, and I want to provide a calm place for viewers. Right now, I’m mainly keeping people company, because what’s happening is so strange. I can make things feel a little bit more normal if I just keep doing what I regularly do.

Have you noticed any uptick in viewers on your stream since the pandemic began?

I actually have. On Twitch, there are two ways to support creators: You can follow them, which is free, or you can subscribe to the stream if you have an Amazon Prime account, or for $5 a month. My subscriber count when I was making the album last year was somewhere between 300 and 350, and then it went down when I finished it. Right now, I’m at like 250, which is the highest it’s been since the album streams.

Let’s say you’re an artist who doesn’t already have a background in streaming or gaming—what do you need to get started?

The most basic streaming equipment is: a computer, a webcam, and some sort of microphone that isn’t a computer mic—it can even be a cheap USB mic. The Logitech webcams are really good, and Blue Microphones make USB mics I used to use a lot. You also need a free software called OBS [Open Broadcaster Software]; I use Streamlabs OBS, which is user-friendly. If you want to stream music production or recording, an interface is helpful too. It just takes a lot of trial and error, honestly.

When you go live, how often are you mapping out exactly what you want to do and how much are you improvising?

It’s good to have a predetermined schedule, but lately I’ve been a bit all over the place, because I’m emotionally all over the place. So I’ve been doing some stream-of-consciousness streams lately, where I’m taking things on as they come. For example: My new music video came out, so I decided that we’re going to sit on stream and watch it 18 times in a row, and talk about the behind-the-scenes stuff. And then someone asked me to play Tetris, so OK, we’re going to play some Tetris. But I think viewers like consistency and knowing what they’re going to get, even though sometimes it can be hard to actually do that.

With more artists than ever flocking to livestreaming in light of the pandemic, how do you think the landscape is going to change?

I’d like to think positively, in that it’s going to mean communities will get tighter and maybe people will grow closer to their fanbases. It’s weird with the limitation of being stuck at home. Before our tour was cancelled, I was actually planning on working on this music and gaming talk show with Twitch once I got back, so now we’re trying to figure out how to do that remotely. Personally, I’m going to do more of the zoning out, sound bath stuff, and dive more into ambient music over the next couple months.

Everything that’s happening is so unfortunate and scary, but one silver lining is that there’s going to be a lot of different streaming stuff out there, and that excites me.

Originally Appeared on Pitchfork