Trivium vocalist and guitarist Matt Heafy is no stranger to streaming on Twitch. Heafy recently played Trivium's Ascendancy in full on the platform, as well as Shogun in full plus Trivium's setlist for the now-postponed Knotfest Japan 2020. Heafy tells Forbes that Twitch is essentially his job when he's home, and he makes significantly more money from it than he does from Trivium's streaming royalties.
Well I’ve always been into video games, I remember beating Mario before I was really speaking English — my mom is Japanese and she kind of raised me for a little while on her own while my dad was in the Marines. So video games were something I was playing before I started playing guitar. I started with the originals like Mario and Donkey Kong, kind of building my way up and then I was heavily into RPG’s as a preteen to my teenage years with Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy IV, VI, VII and IX were my favorites, and then I started getting into first person shooters like Call of Duty, but I got into those through Golden Eye. I started watching some streamers and decided I wanted to do it, but I did it kind of half-assed at first, and not that I was being lazy about it, I just didn’t really know the right way to do it.
I later befriended two Twitch associates, John Howell and Brandon Kaupert, and they invited me to the Twitch headquarters one day when Trivium was playing San Fransisco. So I went down and they gave me a tour of the place and they lent me one of the Gunrun backpacks, which I was using to stream the shows with. So I started streaming some shows and it started going pretty good, and then I visited San Francisco and met up with Brandon and John again, and I told them “man I love Twitch so much I wish I could do it more, but here’s why I can’t,” and the reason I couldn’t is because I have to practice between one to three to five hours a day to keep myself in shape. And Brandon looks at me and says “why don’t you just stream that?” I had an ‘aha’ moment and I was like “no body wants to watch that dude,” and he said “trust me, just try that.”
So lo and behold, I’ve only had one job ever, it’s been Trivium, first band, first job, but for the last three years I’m happy to say Twitch has become a second job. When I’m at home I make significantly more from Twitch streaming than I do with Trivium, and then when I’m out on tour with Trivium then obviously Trivium becomes more and twitch becomes less. But the fact that I’m able to make money doing what I should be doing off tour, staying conditioned, practicing, and being ready for a tour at any given moment, it’s amazing and we really have a supportive community.
Read the full interview here. Trivium will release What the Dead Men Say on April 24.
