Half way through the day yesterday as I was sorting through my constantly full inbox I noticed a new email from Youtube titled Updated YouTube Partner Terms – and there was something in that email that immediately caught my attention.
We’re excited to build on this momentum by taking another big step in favor of choice: offering fans an ads-free version of YouTube for a monthly fee. By creating a new paid offering, we’ll generate a new source of revenue that will supplement your fast growing advertising revenue.
That’s right. An ad-free version of Youtube. I know that many of you who view Youtube videos absolutely despise the ads – alas they’re necessary as they support the various content creators out there who you’re watching. However what if Youtube was able to substitute that income for their content creators by simply offering a subscription based ad-free version? Imagine watching all your favorite channels and all the videos you want without ever having to see an advertisement. How much would that be worth to you?
As far as us content creators go – based on the new Partner Program Terms I read through Youtube is paying out the same 55% of net revenues from subscription fees as they are from current advertising revenues – alas no exact cost for the subscriptions has been mentioned yet.
YouTube will pay you 55% of the total net revenues recognized by YouTube from subscription fees that are attributable to the monthly views or watchtime of your Content as a percentage of the monthly views or watchtime of all or a subset of participating content in the relevant subscription offering (as determined by YouTube). If your Content is included in and viewed by a user in multiple subscription offerings, YouTube will pay you based on the subscription offering with the highest amount of net revenues recognized by YouTube, as calculated by YouTube.
When exactly this will be launched is unknown for now – but considering the email notifying content creators of this has already been sent out I doubt this is very far away from being rolled out. What do you guys think?