YouTube Paid Subscriptions: This Could Go So Wrong [Op-Ed]

YouTube paid subscriptions have started, but this might not go over so well in the long run.

This past week, YouTube debuted their paid subscription channels, and while this may be profitable for YouTube, it could also spell the end of the casual viewer. As YouTube has revealed in the past, they obviously care more about making money than they do about their roots. I have gone on to call the site “ThemTube” because it stopped being about the viewer content and began focusing more on Partner channels.

You’ve noticed by now that newcomers on YouTube hardly even get noticed any more unless they’re already a major video company or advertiser. Smaller channels, the ones that YouTube was built on, have gotten thrown in the “bargain bin” so to speak while channels that are already guaranteed to be a success are given the front page. Hence why I took to calling it “ThemTube.”

Paid channels are supposedly going to offer viewers 14 days to see their videos for free before they have to pony up the dough and reinforce the money vacuum that YouTube is becoming. Apparently any channel that is doing well enough will be offered this option. This may very well be the end of YouTube and the final nail in the coffin of casual viewership. All of those channels on the front page could start charging you by the month.

Remember the music videos that you enjoyed watching from the beginning? Now imagine having to pay each artist’s channel to see the same videos. You see where this is going, don’t you?

Monthly charges could go as high as $9.99 a month, and a lot of the YouTube channels you’re already subscribed to could just cut you off because you won’t pay to watch them any more.

I don’t know about anybody else, but personally I’m not going to pay to watch a video that I’ll probably forget in a week, never mind a channel. It’s just not worth it.

How do you feel about YouTube’s paid subscriptions?