DIGITAL LIFE

Youtube Set To Make Paid Subscription Content Free

Youtube, a company founded by three former employees at PayPal in 2005. Narrowly beating Dailymotion to the market, Youtube currently has captured the market with a whopping 79 percent market share, as of 2016. This is a huge feat considering that this means Youtube’s monopoly is all but terrifying for the competitors. It was perhaps Google’s best decision to acquire the company a year later to see what it has become now.  Perhaps it is because of Youtube and it’s ever so growing business model that the market has become so saturated. Youtube updated their model back in 2016 when they started off their paid content. The subscription-based service was dubbed as Youtube Red at the time but later on, got rebranded to Youtube Premium. The service was charged at $11.99 and continues to date.
Youtube premium offers content ranging from exclusive Youtubers to celebrities like Ellen and Katy Perry. Not only this, a lot of big budget productions come out of the project. These include shows like the Origin and upcoming release includes Wayne, a spin off from the Deadpool series. The service aims to grow and is in direct competition to  Netflix. This is tough though as while Youtube maybe at a higher ground than Netflix on a whole when it comes to family streaming nights or just plain movie or TV show watching, Netflix definitely takes the cake. Youtube is and has always been seen more of a casual, on the go streaming service. Perhaps to overcome this, they have made a recent announcement.
In a recent announcement made by the Youtube Executives, from next year onwards, they would be pushing Youtube Original content for the main Youtube community, completely subscription free. Although it would be available to all, it would be ad-supported in order to help with the costs. This goes back to the argument made previously that in order to be taken as a serious site that publishes content which can be set up to be watched with the family, Youtube aims to gather audience this way. The news was first reported by the Hollywood Reporter which was later confirmed by the executives at Youtube, making it legit.
Perhaps this is the first step to increase their viewership and change peoples’ opinion about the Video Hosting Service. It also allows advertisers to reach a wider range of audience, as claimed by a spokesperson from the company. It could also mean that since new and a wider viewership is incoming then so are new and a bigger variety of shows to follow. This would be necessary too, to retain that audience because again, in the content streaming world, sub-categorizing it on a movie or a tv show scale, giants like Hulu, Amazon Prime and most importantly, Netflix have the market tied ever so tightly in their clutches.


Sarmad Burki