After months of speculation, YouTube has announced today that it is indeed launching yet another monthly subscription service called YouTube Red.
The service will run $9.99 per month and allow you to access regular YouTube videos ad-free, while also providing some premium content produced by creators well-known to the YouTube audience such as PewDiePie. Additionally, your $10 per month will also give you access to YouTube Kids, YouTube Music Key, Google Play Music, and Twitch rival YouTube Gaming. YouTube will also give subscribers premium features such as the ability to save videos for offline viewing.
So, it’s a decent enough value, provided you watch a lot of YouTube content regularly.
The combination of streaming music and premium video is likely to attract at lease some degree of attention from younger consumers, as well as those that really don’t like ads. I think YouTube is also going in the right direction by attempting to differentiate itself from the other major players in streaming video, specifically Netflix and Hulu. And if YouTube Red does take off, my guess is that it wouldn’t be that difficult for Google to negotiate more premium TV content to give those other services a run for their money.
The new YouTube Red service is set to debut Oct. 26.
h/t Engadget
‘YouTube Red’ is Google’s master plan to take on rival media subscriptions originally published by Gigaom, © copyright 2015.
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