Charging to Subscribe On YouTube

[BoxTar]

Now there's been some talk on some YouTubers getting fees put on their channels, making it so you'd have to pay a fee in order to stay subscribed to them. Most of the details, and where I first heard this information, can be found in this video:

[video=youtube;IWYqIMFe5kY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWYqIMFe5kY[/video]

I like this particular explanation because it sees both sides, rather than blaring one or the other. I still agree with his side, though. But I wanna know what you guys think.

Should YouTube make you pay to subscribe to certain channels?

 

[Justac00lguy]

YouTube has always been a free video sharing website, this was the appeal to the concept of the idea in the first place, I highly doubt if initial fees of any format where on the site then it wouldn't be as successful as it today. To be honest I find the idea ludicrous, it goes against, what essentially, YouTube is. I watch YouTube as a causal viewer to watch subscribed content and just to generally browse, I would have no intention to pay a fee just to say subscribed. I'm not a cheap skate by any means but I know that a lot of my subs would lose my subscription if this goes ahead. In my opinion, if this does go ahead I can certainly say that sub numbers will drop for a lot of people.

 

[Salem]

I dont know, there are many international fans just wanna watch funimation or other content they can't see in their country, is funimation can charge people for viewing content or something.

 

[LittleGumball]

This changes everything. Like JC said, Youtube was created to provide FREE entertainment. As someone who has never had any source of income, I would lose a lot of my subscriptions because I have no way to pay to watch something I enjoy. I actually have Youtube almost constantly running, so I have background noise ALL THE TIME. It's either I sit through short ads before watching a 20 second random video/a 20 minute video of people rambling, or I sit through ads every few songs on Spotify. I can't help it - I literally have no way to pay for anything myself. So if Youtube decides to be a butt and charge money for me to watch their stuff, I won't be able to keep watching some of my favorite people. I might as well just buy cable TV at that point.

 

[Ventus]

Free entertainment...yeah I don't see why you have to click the subscribe button. Just bookmark their pages

This shouldn't affect too many people. I don't think it's RIGHT but favorites/bookmarks exist for a reason.

 

[Mercedes]

It blocks content too, Ventus. Unless you're subscribed, can't view content.

For me, meh, it sucks but, I can see why it's being done. YouTube costs money to maintain, a lot of money, and a lot more money as it grows, so it's either stuff like this or it shutting down, really. They could just do what Wikipedia did and ask for donations, or what Destructoid did and ask people to turn off AdBlock, but, I guess this is just them testing the waters. I'd subscribe but individual channel subscribing sounds iffy. That's a lot of payments hovering around. Maybe YT could do packs; like, everything tagged 'Gaming' is $5 a month, and another $5 get all 'Entertainment', etc. Or, lots of sites to premium accounts, could do that. Or pay per network, e.g. Machinima, TGS.

Does suck, however it works, but, money's gotta be made!

 

[Ventus]

It blocks content too, Ventus. Unless you're subscribed, can't view content.

Saw that. I was about to say "f*** YT" but this really might onyl apply to bigtime people like Smosh, Machinima, etc. Big time people are worthless IMO, content is generic and unfunny. If YouTube converts as a whole to subscription services, I'm done.