Streamlabs Talk Studio

live streaming podcasters

Talk Studio (the rebrand of Melon) is the lighter sibling of Streamlabs Desktop — a browser studio for talk shows and live podcasts with guest invites and multistreaming. It's cheap, it works, and the free tier puts a watermark on you. If you need local multitrack capture for editing later, this is the wrong tool.

Streamlabs bought Melon, rebranded it Talk Studio, and parked it as the browser-based companion to Streamlabs Desktop. The pitch is straightforward — open a tab, invite guests with a link, drop in a logo and overlay, multistream to Twitch, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook in one click. Where it differs from StreamYard is mostly price; Standard at $4/mo is the cheapest serious option in this category, and Pro at $12 is similarly underpriced. The compromise is depth. There's no local per-participant recording, so if the network drops, your guest's audio drops with it. Editing tools are basic. And the free tier brands your stream with a Streamlabs watermark, which kills any pretense of professionalism. The smarter move for active streamers is the Streamlabs Ultra bundle, which folds Talk Studio Pro in with Console, Cross Clip, and the Podcast Editor for $27 — better value if you're already in the Streamlabs ecosystem. Standalone, treat it as a budget StreamYard, not a Riverside replacement. For a casual weekly chat show that publishes the YouTube version and doesn't need pristine post-production audio, the math works. For anything where audio quality matters more than monthly cost, look elsewhere.