YouTube to offer subscription-based contents this year

YouTube, one of the top go-to-sites for video contents, is rumored to be working with a group of channel producers to come up with the first ever fee-based contents. The Google-owned video sharing site is said to launch this project during the second quarter of this year.

Talks of such project have been out in the wild for quite some time now, but it’s only recently that somebody actually had insider info on YouTube’s plan to further monetize the contents on their site.

According to the report, the fee-based business model revolves around a monthly subscription which will range from $1PHP 59INR 85EUR 0.95CNY 7 – $5PHP 293INR 424EUR 5CNY 36 (a total of USD12PHP 704INR 1,017EUR 11CNY 87 – USD60PHP 3,521INR 5,085EUR 57CNY 437 in a year). The list of fee-based channels/contents remains to be seen, but the good news is that not all channels/contents will require payment in order to be viewed. Furthermore, the paid channels will only comprise of a small percentage of the total channels in the site (on its early stage at least).

In a nutshell, the proposition aims to provide a top-up for content creators’ ad-based revenue as explained in a statement made by a spokesperson from Google.

“We have long maintained that different content requires different types of payment models. The important thing is that, regardless of the model, our creators succeed on the platform. There are a lot of our content creators that think they would benefit from subscriptions, so we’re looking at that.”

With this proposition in place, the company is also looking to increase their presence in the eyes of the advertising peeps, increasing their revenue and those of the creators in the process. Moreover, it is believed that this project can potentially bring on-demand contents such as series, shows and even pay-per-view events to the site, making it easier to for consumers to access it for a reasonable fee.

At the end of the day, it’s all about money-making and seizing every window of opportunity to do so. Though not all of us will agree to this subscription-based viewing/streaming, we have to acknowledge the fact that there are some who aspire to earn a living off of their YouTube videos and that is where we think this project will prove beneficial. But noble as the cause may sound, it doesn’t take away the fact that consumers will still be hesitant to pay for something that’s free to begin with.

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