Poll: If youtube went to a pay model, would you pay?

[omega 616]

Fuck no, there are very few channels that put out enough videos to warrant that. That isn't even considering the length of each video, just the number of them.

The stuff on youtube, is 95% videos that are less than 15 minutes in length and the rest are like an hour or more long. Either you're going to be paying a penny for each view or way too much for each view.

I can't even imagine a pricing structure for that, 5 minutes for £1? A penny a second? Anything under 10 minutes is a £1 but anything after is a penny a minute?

 

[dfphetteplace]

Not a chance. If they did that, it would be the end of youtube, or at least bring up some major competition (which would be nice, honestly). I am not paying for youtube, ever.

 

[TheMann]

Nope, and YouTube would be wise to remember that when people are suddenly charged for something they are used to get for free, it cannot end well as far as publicity is concerned. I would have to wonder if some of my favorite larger channels would suddenly become priced. Would I have to find myself having to pay for things like Angry Joe, HAWP, or HuskyStarcraft? Would the content creators have any say in the matter?

Let's look at Husky in particular. He is probably the most popular English language Starcraft caster out there. He gets literally tens of millions of views between his two channels. But as awesome as he is at his job, his subscriptions would plummet if people had to pay to watch his casts. Not to mentions the fact that I could still watch live GSL casts on TwitchTV for free. It would hurt the big channels immensely, which would cut into the creators' profits which would in turn cut into YouTube's (Google's) profits. And then there would be the question of how much of a commission YouTube would take from the subscription fees. It'd be a total cluster-fuck to say the least.

There's still blip and vimeo, so I can live with never using youtube ever again. Besides, compared to blip and vimeo, youtube has content the appeals to the lowest common denominator.

Indeed. I actually think there's a lot of talent on YouTube (although the comments are often "lowest common denominator" material). Still, if YouTube did this, it'd be a happy day for Vimeo and Blip, because they would absorb a ton of new content.

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

Another no from me.


The smartest thing however, if they're considering a pay-per-view youtube setup, would perhaps be to leave current youtube as it is, but set something up like this for that kind of material usually taken down by copyright currently (tv series and stuff that people upload when they shouldn't).

Instead of just 'this has been removed', they could set the blocker up with a re-direct link to either the particular video or even just the proper copyright holders channel(who would presumably have what you are looking for put up there under the ppv system), like 'this has been blocked because copyright, but hey that's ok, watch it legit on youtube right here: *link to ppv*'.

I mean, various companies such as funimation already do seem to have youtube channels set up showing some of their stuff free, they could then put the rest of it up as PPV in the same place. I would however make it so non-published stuff can't be made ppv, so youtube celebrities and the like can't use it (unless they start selling their content in shops and get proper publishing, which I lot wouldn't/couldn't do, meaning youtube as it currently is hopefully wouldn't be affected by the addition).



honestly though, youtube should just stay as is.

 

[Sewer Rat]

Nope. I'm probably not going to be paying for Netflix much longer let alone Youtube. Would I lose out on a valuable boredom killer? Yes, but there is no way I am paying to watch.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Absolutely not.
You hear me, YouTube?

 

[Akytalusia]

they can try it, but most people are going to continue only watching free channels. the only thing this would accomplish would be that the channels that downgraded to a subscription model would lose most of their traffic.