YouTube wants to cash in on some of the same success as Netflix and Amazon Fire with a new venture called YouTube Red. The Google subsidiary made its bid for a spot beyond its niche of mostly homemade videos in a blog post by YouTube senior product manager Matt Leske, who explained how the new service will work when it debuts at the end of October.
Paying $10 a month will get you a combination of features including no ads, the ability to save videos offline and use the newly launched YouTube Gaming app and upcoming YouTube Music app. The music app is a lot like Pandora in terms of using a starting song or artist to find other tracks you might like.
All of that is certain to convince plenty of people to sign up, but it's what comes next that makes YouTube's announcement really intriguing. Next year, YouTube will start making original shows and movies for Red subscribers. That means directly competing with Netflix, Amazon Fire and other streaming services. And not just on the customer side. YouTube getting into original programming means that the producers, writers and other video content creators will have another platform for their creations. It's easy to imagine a very heated competition to sign the next House of Cards or Daredevil.
The move is certainly a gamble from YouTube. We could be facing an avalanche of high-quality shows that will keep everyone in an endless TV marathon or, if YouTube is wrong, it could be a giant waste of resources better spent on improving how it serves its current customers, like improving the ad system in a way that doesn't make people turn to ad-blockers.
It's a bold experiment regardless, and Google certainly has the deep pockets to give it a legitimate chance of success. And be honest, a reality show that traps YouTube stars in a zombie apocalypse simulator called Fight of the Living Dead does sound intriguing.
You can check out a preview of YouTube Red below.
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