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Audio-only Conferences and Livestreams

In many use cases, you only need real-time audio, without any video streaming. If your use case falls into this category, then you can benefit greatly from using audio-only rooms in Fishjam.

Why Should I Care?​

Audio-only rooms are heavily discounted compared to normal rooms. As described in more detail on the pricing page, Fishjam rooms are priced based on the total connection time of peers in them. Audio-only rooms come at a 75% discount for both conferencing and livestreaming.

Conferencing​

For conferencing, the base price is $1 per 1000 participant minutes.

For example, if you have a normal room with 10 peers connected for 100 minutes, then the total cost of the room will be $1. If the same room were audio-only, the final cost of the room would only be $0.25.

Livestreaming​

For livestreaming, the base price is $0.8 per 1000 minutes of streamer and each viewer.

In a livestream with 1 streamer and 9999 viewers, all connected for 100 minutes, the total connection time is 10,000 minutes. For a normal livestream, this would cost $8.00. If the same room were audio-only, the final cost would only be $2.00.

How Do I Use It?​

Using this feature is as easy as setting the roomType field when creating a room using our Server SDKs.

info

Attempting to stream a video while connected to an audio_only or audio_only_livestream room will result in only the audio being sent to the other peers.

Conferencing​

Set roomType to audio_only when creating a room:

const audioOnlyRoom = await fishjamClient.createRoom({ roomType: 'audio_only' });

Now, you can connect peers normally to the room as described in our React Native and React docs.

Livestreaming​

Set roomType to audio_only_livestream when creating a room:

const audioOnlyRoom = await fishjamClient.createRoom({ roomType: 'audio_only_livestream' });

Refer to our Livestreaming tutorial to learn how to connect streamers and viewers.

info

The React Native and React SDKs will log a warning in the console if any attempt to add video to an audio-only room is made. This aims to assist in debugging, as adding video to an audio-only room has no effect and is most likely a mistake.