A letter from YouTube to its scores of content creators has fueled speculation that Google is planning to launch an ads-free, 2-in-1 subscription service next month.
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YouTube became a popular video sharing platform but monetizing it was always a challenge. This is based on the fact that the a la carte price for Music Key was supposed to be $10.00. In addition to this, users will also continue to receive the benefits of Google Play Music Unlimited.
On YouTube, all videos must now be made available to subscribers – you can’t choose to remain exclusively available to non-paying customers.
Presumably under the wider YouTube subscription offer, the Google site would have to share royalties with other content owners whose videos are consumed without ads.
YouTube itself has not been able to commit to any timelines about the new subscription service since the idea was floated about a year ago.
YouTube has sent an email to content owners warning that their videos will be pulled down if they don’t agree to the T&Cs of its upcoming subscription service by October 22. The company claims that this new scheme will help create a new source of revenue that will supplement the current advertising revenue that most content creators receive.
While we are not certain that October 22 is the release date of YouTube Red, we can definitely expect some good news prior to this date. “We have support from the overwhelming majority of our partners, with over 95 percent of YouTube watch-time covered by agreements, and more in the pipeline about to close”.
YouTube has announced it’ll be implementing an ads-free version of the site for viewers.
A good number of YouTube users have been asking for this for years, partly because of the annoyance that the ads brought and party because of the sheer psychological pressure that marketing is putting on them.
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The user can accept the agreement by logging in to Youtube.com using the username from your desktop or laptop and follow the directions given. Of course, at any time, you can decide to re-enable monetization by navigating to your Account Features page. It has been rumored that Google would eventually take YouTube Music Key out of beta and charge $10 a month for that, putting it in line with competing offerings like Spotify and Apple Music.
