The way you experience YouTube may be dramatically different before the end of the year. According to multiple sources, the world’s largest video-sharing site is preparing to launch its two separate subscription services before the end of 2015 — Music Key, which has been in beta since last November, and another unnamed service targeting YouTube’s premium content creators, which will come with a paywall. Taken together, YouTube will be a mix of free, ad-supported content and premium videos that sit behind a paywall.
With the exception of a few video rentals, YouTube has always been a free, ad-supported service. But the company is about to get serious about subscription services, offering new ways for the users that create videos to make money. While two subscription offerings for the same service might seem odd to some — with one music industry source calling it "strange on top of strange" — YouTube’s thinking was likened to that of a cable company offering different packages for sports and movies.
As The Verge reported back in April, the unnamed subscription service is aimed at YouTube’s most popular creators and their audiences, and will offer ad-free videos and the ability to save videos offline, as well as access to premium content behind a paywall. If all goes well, there may be more category-specific subscription services on the platform. Music Key — which already offers offline access and ad-free streaming — could be joined by subscriptions targeted at children’s programming or gamers in the future.
With two upcoming subscription services, YouTube, which pulled in $4 billion in revenue in 2014, could be on the path to finally turning a profit.
