# Youtube Red: Youtube paid subscription service



## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

So, Google has finally announced their long rumoured subscription service, to be called Youtube Red.

http://youtube-global.blogspot.ca/2015/10/red.html



> For years, YouTube’s fans have been telling us they want more—more choice when watching their favorite content, more ways to support their favorite creators and, above all, the option to watch their favorite videos uninterrupted.
> 
> On October 28, we’re giving fans exactly what they want. Introducing YouTube Red -- a new membership designed to provide you with the ultimate YouTube experience.
> 
> ...


I think this has potential to be very big for Google and online video.

It is great value ($10/month), as it gives ad-free access to Youtube Music/Play Music, Youtube ad-free on all platforms, some exclusive original content coming soon. But the biggest impact will be on content creators, who will split 55% (or $5.50) of each subscriber's monthly fee based on watch time for their videos. So, if a user watches 100 videos a month (and subscribers are likely to be significant users of Youtube), each view will be worth an average of $0.055, or equivalent to a CPM of $55. That compares to a typical CPM from ads of ~$2. If Youtube allows content owners to restrict access to certain videos to paid subs, I can see content owners (older TV shows & movies) adding their catalogues to the platform.

Youtube currently has 1 billion monthly users. It would not take a huge % of paid users to start adding significant revenue to Google's top line.


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## amack081 (Jun 23, 2015)

This will be very interesting on the part of Google/Youtube. While this could end up like a Google+ failure, I do believe that because of the current users this could really take off.

The long term play is all about the new originals they release. They have to be the same quality and take off as a Netflix original series. For me, its all about the continued/renewed subscriptions as initial subscriptions should be high.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

I think this may be a prelude to preventing ad blocker users from accessing the content unless they pay to subscribe. 

So you can either watch the ads, or pay the subscription fee. Blocking the ads while still consuming the content is essentially 'stealing'. I don't feel very strongly about that being 'wrong' per se, but Youtube/Google is well within their rights to protect access to their content from those who are not contributing to funding it. Particularly because the two solutions are not onerous. Youtube ads are not bad at all, and the subscription charge gives reasonable value for money (similar cost to other paid music subscriptions).


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