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Amazon Prime Vs YouTube: Amateur Video Platform Launching

By Nick Younker
Published on: 06:26 PST, May 10, 2016

Amazon Prime is about to take on the other streaming video giant – YouTube. The days of the YouTube star are about to get even bigger when Amazon Prime launches its amateur video platform that will allow its users to upload video content and even profit off their views.

For those who do not know or have been living under a rock for several years, Amazon Prime has become one the biggest and most sought-after online retail services package on the internet. Not only do Amazon Prime members get exclusive access to their turntable selection of a streaming video buffet, but they also get exclusive perks that go along with it, including two-day deliveries, Prime Music, and cloud storage.

But now, Amazon Prime is expanding its highly coveted online retail package to provide subscribers with the ability to become Amazon Prime stars, much like those YouTube stars. What’s even more exciting is that you do not have to be an Amazon Prime member to post your videos and start making money off the new platform. Your earnings will be based on how much your content is viewed and will be credited to you as a partner, of sorts, for the service, according to Bloomberg Technology.

What is going to set the new Amazon Prime amateur video apart from YouTube amateur video? For starters, Amazon Prime is looking for people who are little more than amateurs for this new business venture. It does have specific requirements for its video producers, which includes all video must be in high definition and each video must have a closed captioning service embedded.

The first thing they are trying to do is raise the bar for video content that is going to be displayed across the amateur circuit and force producers to make quality videos for their Prime subscribers. So there is that pre-screening fact that Amazon Prime will have to edge out into this new emerging platform. It is also unclear whether the market will tolerate those requirements when they can just go to YouTube and do it their own way, the way they always did to start with.

But there is also a monetary reason that some video producers might opt for Amazon Prime instead of YouTube. That is because there is a subscription-based service that will allow for there to be more money placed in the monthly pot to spread around. It seems as though Amazon Prime is trying to do something similar to what Amazon does with Kindle Unlimited. In the Kindle Unlimited program, authors can sign their books up for KU, and at the end of the month, each KU author gets their share of the global pot based on how many people read their books. So a performance-based platform like this will likely catch on, but it may take awhile.

Amazon Prime has also described the service as being for those professional film producers who need a platform to showcase their talents. The sad truth is there are a lot of gifted filmmakers out there that just cannot find the right backers for their projects. In the end, their creations end up collecting dust on shelves and do not get disseminated to a wide audience. What Amazon Prime is trying to do here is allow these film producers a platform to showcase their talents and make money off what they produce.

Of course, there is always the possibility that Amazon Prime could pick up their scripts and projects for an Amazon Original Series on their streaming video buffet as well.

On the flip side, YouTube has also been trying to get into the streaming buffet market with subscription-based content, like Netflix and Amazon Prime already do. So the streaming video market is definitely getting bigger with every emerging or expanding platform.

There has been no word yet as to when Amazon Prime will expand the consumer upload platform.

[Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images]

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