YouTube is set to roll out its plans to start a new subscription program, with the company forcing its paid partners to accept the new agreement or else their videos will no longer be monetized.
Google, who own the video sharing site, will offer its users a new service for a monthly subscription fee that will see ads being removed from the videos, along with granting them the ability to view videos offline.
According to The Verge, popular YouTube partners have already been informed that the changes are set to take place, with Google taking 45% of the monthly subscription fees (which are presumed to be set at around $10) and the remaining 55% being pooled by the company, with it then being distributed between the channels in accordance with how many views they get. In other words, the bigger the channel, the bigger cut they’ll receive of the revenue generated by the subscription fees.
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It’s not yet clear how much money YouTube hopes to generate from the paid subscription model, though partners are right to be concerned regarding the changes. Thus far all revenue generated from the site has been through advertisements that play on each video, and while monetized using ads will still exist, if more users adopt the paid subscription model then, depending upon how evenly the pooled revenue is split, some could find themselves losing money as a result of the new strategy.
Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg is the most subscribed YouTube partner on the site.
These concerns aren’t helped by Google allegedly forcing partners to accept the agreement, with those who wish to opt out of it having all of their videos set to private, therefore ensuring that they cannot be monetized. It also puts videos supported by ads outside of those that Google accepts in shady water, with many YouTubers advertising products within their videos. There is allegedly a box within partners’ Creators Studio that they can ‘check’ to state that they run ads within their videos to pay for production costs, though if subscribers are paying for a service without ads, this could stand to annoy them and place Google in hot water for false advertising.
Here’s the letter the partners have received:
Dear YouTube Partner,
Your fans want choices. Not only do they want to watch what they want, whenever they want, anywhere, and on any device they choose, they want YouTube features built specifically with their needs in mind. Over the past several months, we’ve taken bold new steps to bring these experiences to life. Since inviting hundreds of thousands of fans into our YouTube Music Key Beta, we’ve seen tremendous engagement. And we’ve seen an equally enthusiastic response for our new YouTube Kids app, designed to give families a simpler and safer video-viewing experience— it’s already crossed 2 million installations in less than one month.
We’re excited to build on this momentum by taking another big step in favor of choice: offering fans an ads-free version of YouTube for a monthly fee. By creating a new paid offering, we’ll generate a new source of revenue that will supplement your fast growing advertising revenue.
So what’s next?
Launching a new paid offering will require us to update your terms through your Creator Studio Dashboard—a process that should feel familiar to anyone who went through a similar process three years ago when we began distributing and monetizing your content on mobile devices. Today, mobile represents over half of all watchtime and mobile revenue is up 200% in the last year. Just as with mobile, we’re confident this latest contract update will excite your fans and generate a previously untapped, additional source of revenue for you. Please look out for our notification, review it and let us know your thoughts.
It’s an exciting year for YouTube, as we push ourselves into uncharted territories. But we continue to be guided by a desire to deliver the choices fans want and the revenue you need. By working closely with you, we know it’ll be a successful journey.
The YouTube Team
It’s still too early to judge whether or not this new change will impact upon its partners’ finances either negatively or positively, but its aggressive pushing of the new agreement is certainly going to ruffle a few feathers.
Photos: Getty Images
