YouTube continues to be a popular outlet for some – and it has even allowed certain superstars to find a bigger outreach to TV, as noted by this recent deal through StyleHaul to bring its vloggers to the Oxygen cable network. However, there have been mixed feelings about the website’s new music subscription service, with some artists indicating that they’ve been unfairly shut out.
Regardless, YouTube is moving forward with the service – and has a new plan in place set to make it more appealing to a mass audience. Per CNBC, {link no longer active} the company’s subscription model would actually remove ads from music videos for paying customers. There are some catches, though.
The first is that the program only works with “eligible” music videos, although YouTube didn’t list the terms in regards to what counts as eligible. The second is that the ads would still continue for non-music related videos, which is the status quo for most of YouTube’s programming anyway.
YouTube hopes to launch the service sometime over the next few months, with the team still hammering away on things here and there to make sure it runs smoothly. If all goes according to plan for the company, it’s likely to open a new revenue source for the site, as well as give content creators the opportunity to gain a new audience – even though they can still post videos as they please with the service now.
This isn’t the first time that YouTube fiddled with a subscription service, although it’s on a much greater scale now. Back in 2013, YouTube tried a program where users could pay $1 a month to watch ad-free videos. Obviously, that program eventually faded away, but the same thing isn’t likely to happen with its music program – at least, that’s not the way it looks thus far.
We’ll see how this unfolds over the next few months, but we’re pretty sure that some people will still be skeptical of its success, especially when it comes to whether they feel like paying a subscription fee or not. Time will tell.
