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It looks like YouTube’s paid subscription option is finally arriving

We have been hearing about YouTube's potential plans to put a subscription option in place for months now but it looks like it will finally arrive as soon as next month. According to new reports, Google is planning to launch paid subscriptions at the end of October, with an email being sent to current YouTube partners stating that they need to sign up by the 22nd of October, or they may face some issues.

Google is planning to use this new method of monetization to supplement advertising revenue, since Adblock has pretty much killed CPM rates across the web, not just on YouTube. Partners need to sign up to be a part of the subscription model by the 22nd of October, or their videos will be set to private and monetisation will be disabled in the US- essentially, partners don't really have a choice.

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This is all according to an email obtained by Re/Code. The subscription means you won't see adverts but you will instead be supporting YouTube directly. It doesn't seem like YouTube is planning to give each channel their own paid subscription button, as we have seen on Twitch, instead, the subscription will cover the entirety of YouTube and possibly even YouTube's Music Key service as well.

Apparently, Google is planning on charging $9.99 a month for ad free viewing, with the service set to be US-only at first. The price may seem a little on the high side to many so it will be interesting to see if this plays out in Google's favour.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: A lot of content creators on the web rely on advertising revenue to keep doing what they love. It's no different here at KitGuru, unfortunately, ad-block has made providing free content on the web much harder for most. With that in mind, it's not surprising to see YouTube attempting a subscription model now. Obviously a paid subscription might be a bit too much for some people but whitelisting channels or sites you visit regularly helps. Do you think YouTube's paid subscription model will be successful? Would you rather pay for the entire site, or on a per channel basis as seen on Twitch? 

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27 comments

  1. One word. Add block

  2. While it’s good for the bigger and mid tier youtubers whom make their living making videos what I don’t understand is how this allieviates the problem adblock causes. Sure some might want to pay the subscription solely out of moral and support to the content creators but for most who use adblock it changes nothing

  3. that’s two words, just sayin’

  4. Wait, the channels will be set private OR users will be charged subscriptions OR both? I’m confused.

    Oh well, if they stuff it up too much someone will fill the gap.

  5. Youtube should just copy twitch’s sub system. 5$ per month, give half to vid creators, let subs get like special comment section and ability to use emoticons that the channel owner can add. Ezy money ezy life

  6. Unlike with things like movie/music downloads, there is no moral imperative to pay a subscription fee. Advertising is not legally or morally obligatory. The only solution I see is just blocking all content unless you pay a small fee. And of course, this will encourage piracy, but when there is no money to be had in advertising, you can no longer make free content.

    When the ad based economy comes crashing down, users will have to adjust just as well. If nobody gets paid, nothing gets made.

  7. Fml autocorrect when you least expect it
    adblock *

  8. trouble is the actual content makers are unlikely to get any of that subscription money at all, Google is not exactly the most generous of companies.

  9. Let me show you real ways to get paid some money on weekly basis by completing basic tasks+ on-linefrom comfort of your home for 3-4 hrs a day ~ Check >my__@+__ID to see more information

  10. So here’s how it works: You don’t pay, you’ll see ads, that ad money will pay content creators. You pay, that money will also be paying content creators.
    Adblock? You’re killing the content creators and you know it, using adblock means less money for them, and from YouTube’s own finance, we know it’s breaking even, do you expect a company would want to start suffering losses? It’s a lose-lose for both Google’s YouTube division and content creators, hosting so many videos isn’t easy when it’s so easy to watch all of them. If you say “Other sites do it, too”, well, other sites are smaller than YouTube, easier to manage, it’s business, the bigger it is, the harder it is to sustain. Now with adblock, you’re not helping, either.
    Now with payment, that means you can support your favourite creators. Just remember, the videos don’t make themselves, if people spent hours making that video you clicked like on, they deserve something in return, if you hate ads, you pay for it, if you don’t want to pay, let the ads stay, don’t be selfish, it’s not about Google, it’s about the YouTubers.

  11. thing is, i HATE to use adblock but to have to have for a 1-2 min ad that i CANT skip is retarded, some of the ads are longer than the youtube video itself.

  12. well screw youtube then if you need to pay for watching videos. the people that make the videos can use their own medium instead of a public video website.

  13. well alternatives for youtube will pop up hard if you really need to pay for watching videos. i’m not gonna put my visa up there so they can leech it !

  14. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! FUCK OFF, SCREW YOU YOUTUBE! Sons of Bitches!

  15. or the content creators can move to patreon instead for their money making needs…

  16. All the bullshit excuses that people of had for using adblock well now the consequences are here. Who knew that people didn’t want to make stuff for free and then make a loss by hosting it.
    Now can you imagine an internet where every site is subscription based? Yes the internet is going to look like a magazine stand in newsagents and all the magazines are sealed.

  17. I’m pretty sure Adblocker got popular ever since Youtube and other sites put up very invasive ads. If you decide to drop ads on videos in playlists, I’m not the slightest ashamed of using Adblock. What’s even the point of an ad if it’s running in a hidden tab?! You’re literally almost asking for people to use adblock since your average teen will search on Google “How to stop the ads in Youtube” after they had enough of it.
    If content creators are in need of money for creating their content, it’d be more easier and more than fair to drop a donate button right below their videos.

  18. I say hell no. Hell no to this system. It’s going to end up hurting YouTube partners in the long run and I for one will not approve of it.

  19. I for one don’t mind a ad here or there and i use adblock and whitelist some sites like twitch accept ads on there but when you go to a site like this one and it blocks 19 ads then thats when i think yeah we do need adblock if site owners used limited ads and non invasive ones then there would be no need for adblock

  20. Bull excuses? No, when autoplay videos pop up, when I have to see ads that are longer than the actual video, when my pages load so much slower and pages don’t function properly because of all the ads, then there’s a very good reason for adblockers. Get it together. Adblock apps wouldn’t be needed if we weren’t constantly being bombarded with ads to the point that they impact our lives in a more significant way than the information we’re there to get.

  21. There will always be those that give out content for free. Many Youtubers and tech reviewers did it with just donations. Ads are perfectly fine when they are non-intrusive.

  22. You can have adblock disabled normally, then on a video you don’t want to watch ad, enable it. Most ads can be skipped after a few seconds so I can’t imagine that would be too much of a hassle. Or else, that’s the trade-off.

  23. Predictably, the fault is thrown at the feet of Adblock, rather than the reason for Adblock having to exist.

    If web-based advertising, of which Google is a huge player in, actually took a) more care to focus advertising appropriately, b) and site owners had better tools to filter out the shocking amount of junk and malware advertising, and c) adsense and such gave a fairer amount to site owners, Adblock would not be the force that it currently is.

    Adblock exists because, as it stands, internet advertising is pissing people off – adverts for products shown to you for 6 months after you’d bought them, shitty pamphlet style blocks of text with a picture from amazon of something you looked at last week, adverts for bad MMOs or ‘You won’t believe how I earn $900 a week!’, and worst of all, malware that uses ad systems as a delivery vector.

    Adblock doesn’t exist to shit on content producers, it exists because the main way of advertising on the internet is utterly shitty to your customers, and to use it is to partner with companies and organisations that actually don’t give a shit either about you, your site, or your visitors, and part of that problem is Google itself.

    I couldn’t give a shit about Google whining about ad revenue on Youtube when Google Adsense is part of the problem

  24. Bandwidth isn’t free though..

  25. As much as i love YouTube i will not be paying to watch videos made by other people just doing it as a hobby!!

  26. over here in belgium they are going to make a Ghz bandwith in the next years… the fun thing is it will be cheaper then what we got now? how is that possible ?

  27. and if youtube does this? A lot of people will go to other websites with the same functions. Like dailymotion and others. Its allready on twitch that you have to pay to see some videos or streams, well a day later they are on youtube, so i don’t see any point in doing this?