Substack isn’t just about newsletters anymore.
The platform, once synonymous with longform email, is now doubling down on livestreaming—and it’s making the experience smoother, smarter, and more social than ever. This week, Substack unveiled a batch of updates aimed at making live video not just easier to use, but a real engine for audience growth.
Here’s what’s new: Creators can now schedule livestreams with just a few clicks, and Substack automatically generates promotional assets for sharing across Notes and social media. Inviting guests has gotten simpler, too—no Substack account required, just an email or SMS invite. For those camera-shy moments, an audio-only mode is now built in. And after the show? Substack’s AI will clip the best moments for you, pushing standout snippets to Notes and even alerting you in real time if a clip is taking off. Stats for video performance are already live on iOS, with Android support coming soon.
This push is more than just a feature drop. Substack’s video ambitions have been brewing for a while, from letting creators upload video posts to experimenting with live tools for its top writers. Now, with livestreaming open to anyone with at least 10 free subscribers, the company is betting on video as the next big frontier. It’s a move that puts Substack in closer competition with YouTube, Patreon, and even TikTok, especially as creators look for alternatives in a shifting social media landscape.
Is Substack quietly becoming the next all-in-one creator studio? The lines between newsletter, podcast, and video are blurring fast, and Substack seems determined to be at the center of it all. For creators, the question now is: Will audiences follow them into this new, more interactive Substack universe—or will they stick to the platforms they know?