your not the only one, i hate it too

It's because doing it by stream for most artists is both the easiest and safest way to get them done. They have the buyer there telling them exactly how things are going as they do it and dont have to wait longer than ten seconds to get an opinion of if something needs changing or not.

Basically it's just the easiest way to do it. Some artists just enjoy the ease so much that they ONLY do that, afterall it's far better to have an artist be happy and have an easier time so that they can better make their commissioner happy

This.

The best commissions I got done were in a stream, where I could ask for modifications on the go.

What Heifer said except that it also helps people to focus a lot, since you can't have any excuses to distract yourself if you have people watching. Still, it's always a good idea to provide other options and to allow for commissions to not be streamed if people prefer. Doing streams only just seems needlessly limiting.

I'm unable to commission a few of my favorite artists strictly because they only take them through commissions. Do they not want our money?

Holy hell my brain. Strictly through streams.*

On one hand yeah, it can be frustrating. I like watching certain streams but I find it extremely frustrating when an artist is stream commissions only because I dislike having to gamble an evening on the off-chance that I -might- get a commission slot after sitting there for four hours. On the other hand, there's a theoretical limit on the amount of available cash each commissioner has at their disposal, so this should theoretically free up more available slots on people that take off-stream commissions. Granted, I've seen several streams going on where the artist has a posted list of in-progress off-stream commissions and that always irks me a bit.

I suppose I've only paid them to produce an image, not that I've given them a specific order in which it needs to be finished, but I have occasionally found myself going "so you did -how- many others before touching mine?" In the end I find myself spending a little more time researching an artist's behavior patterns before engaging them for a commission. I've got a few too many that I've been waiting over 6 months for (and two past the year mark ._.)