Paid YouTube channels? This is the first day in which I have heard about it and my Facebook is already blowing up with people sharing the articles, outraged at the thought of having to pay for their YouTube. However, I don’t believe they are actually reading the article thoroughly.
The talk of bringing in paid channels to YouTube is more aimed at the idea of bringing actual shows to YouTube. As companies such as Netflix boast subscription numbers of 30 million, YouTube looks to put on their armor and compete.
YouTube has always been free, but it wasn’t so long ago that they started adding advertisements before the videos. So it has been evident for some time now that YouTube is evolving. In reality, who expected it to remain completely free without advertisements? The company was going to need to generate more revenue as the number of users increased.
So logically, we are onto the next step.
With this new service, YouTube will finally be able to bring television shows and possibly movies to the viewer. No longer will you find entire movies split up into ten parts, only to discover that YouTube has taken it down, being justified in every way to do so. I mean, come on, is it even worth the hassle? Why not just give YouTube the chance to generate some revenue, while providing us full movies that we can enjoy.
YouTube is onto something big, but they must be wary of it. They have to know that if they go berserk and begin requiring payments for all videos, their customer base will fail. Users won’t care to pay money to post videos or pay money to see other users that are just trying to start at YouTube. If it were that way, then the new users would never get played, because who would purchase the channel of an unknown?
They must be smart about it.
If it is just the idea of bringing in television shows and possibly charging the high end channels, such as the comedy channel of Smosh, then it could work. Of course users are going to be angry at first and YouTube may initially lose a good bit of subscribers out of sheer anger, but as with everything else, it’ll grow to be the norm and everyone will just be saying “Remember back when…”.