According to a blog post by Twitch, the company has announced that they will be introducing a new feature called Subscriber Streams. These will be exclusive streams where only those who are subscribed to the streamer can watch them. This is a huge change from before where anyone could watch a stream, subscribed or not.
Twitch says, “If a viewer subscribes to a channel at any tier, including a Twitch Prime subscription, they’ll have access to that creator’s Subscriber Streams. If they’re not a subscriber and they arrive on a channel that’s running a Subscriber Stream, they’ll see a preview of what’s going on and, if they’d like, they’ll be able to join the party immediately by subscribing.”
The company notes that subscriber-only streams are not necessarily private streams and will attempt to keep these streams safe through the preview feature mentioned above. At the moment, the feature is currently in beta and there will be some requirements that streamers need to meet if they want to take part in the program.