YouTube mulls creating paid subscription video channels

Would you pay a monthly subscription fee to watch Harlem Shake and Gangnam Style parodies? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some content on YouTube that you’d be willing to pay for at some point. The Wall Street Journal reports that YouTube executives are batting around the idea of letting YouTube content creators start their own subscription-based channels to give them additional revenue streams besides advertising dollars. Robert Kyncl, a YouTube vice president, acknowledged to the Journal that it will be tough for content providers to get users to “take out a credit card” before watching their videos but added that there will be “a lot of experimentation” and that “over time, a lot of people will figure it out.” The Journal says that YouTube isn’t even close to making a formal announcement about subscription channels, however, and that the idea is still in its preliminary stages.