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Digital
YouTube might enter the subscription domain
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 17 December 2009
Google may consider a subscription model for YouTube. The once mainly user-generated (or user-stolen) content website has, of course, been busy signing deals with various content owners over the last few years so to become the home of official video content online, as well as the hub for all videos involving people falling down stairs or dancing in an amusing way. In the UK deals have been done with both Channel 4 and Five in this regard.
The specifics of the deals between YouTube and the broadcasters are not known, though to date Google has planned to cover any content licensing costs with advertising revenue. But, as YouTube’s dabblings in the music space has demonstrated, ad revenues rarely get close to covering the sorts of licensing fees the content owners want to charge, even those content owners willing to slash the prices they were demanding eighteen months ago.
Which is presumably why Google are now considering charging a subscription fee for users who want to access full-length properly-licensed TV programmes on demand. Such an arrangement would put YouTube into more direct competition with US web-TV platform Hulu, which has global expansion plans.
Google exec David Eun admitted subscriptions were being considered in an interview with Reuters, in which he said: “We’re making some interesting bets on long-form content; not all content is accessible to us with the advertising model”.
