The YouTube partner program launched in 2007 and since that time more than one million content channels have made their way to YouTube. Channels on the network now span humor, sports, news, education, and much more.
On Thursday YouTube unveiled a new way for the social network to leverage cold hard cash from its users. The social video network officially unveiled its long awaited and rumored paid subscription service.
In the YouTube blog post the social network notes that the most frequent request from content producers is the creation of new flexible ways for monetizing and distributing content.
Here’s the big YouTube subscription service reveal:
“Starting today, we’re launching a pilot program for a small group of partners that will offer paid channels on YouTube with subscription fees starting at $0.99 per month. Every channel has a 14-day free trial, and many offer discounted yearly rates. For example, Sesame Street will be offering full episodes on their paid channel when it launches. And UFC fans can see classic fights, like a full version of their first event from UFC’s new channel. You might run into more of these channels across YouTube, or look here for a list of pilot channels. Once you subscribe from a computer, you’ll be able to watch paid channels on your computer, phone, tablet and TV, and soon you’ll be able to subscribe to them from more devices.”
Ultimately YouTube plans to launch a self-service feature for qualifying partners. The self-service feature will allow content producers to offer subscription plans on a user by user basis.
YouTube wants to hear from channel creators and they are asking anyone interested in creating a paid channel to visit the link found HERE.
Will you be paying $0.99 per month (per channel) in order to take advantage the YouTube subscription fee service?
99¢ a month maybe. Acorn Media is $4.99, and I already own a lot of that content on DVD; not sure that would be a good investment for me. Most of the other channels, at least at first glance, don't tell me anything about what they offer, or tell me that what they offer is nothing I'm really interested in.
If successful, this could demonstrate that cable a la carte plans are viable (which the public knows is true, but the cable companies don't want you to believe is true). I really don't want to shell out $50-$60 a month to watch 5 channels (and I don't — no cable since 2000).
I was wondering when YouTube would do something like this!
I don't think I would pay this for youtube. The quality is just not good enough for me to pay to watch tv on it. I do really with cable companies would charge via channel and not packages though.