The growing-rockier relationship between Google and Apple might just
have taken another good hard swat. With news that YouTube is seeking to
offer the kind of subscription-based TV programming that iTunes offers,
things could potentially heat up.
Actually, YouTube's service is positioned not just as competition to
iTunes, but to Amazon as well as a nascent subscription service Hulu is
considering. In fact, all the major players in digital content are
positioning themselves in some fashion or another to deliver regular TV
content online -- for a fee.
According to Peter Kafka at Media Memo, with a pay-per-episode
arrangement similarly priced to iTunes, YouTube hopes to lure TV
programmers into allowing the
company to rent out episodes starting the day after they initially
appear on television. In what may prove a tough sell to customers,
YouTube's model seems predicated only on streaming programs from their
servers to desktops. Discouragingly, both TV and Google executives
cited
studies that suggest most programs, once purchased, are only viewed
once.
There doesn't appear to be any word as to whether or not viewers could
potentially
"own" the rights to stream the videos whenever they wanted and as often
as they wanted, nor whether the native YouTube app on the iPhone would
allow for such streaming. While this "rental" model does appear to bear
resemblance to offerings from NetFlix or other DVD rental services, the
exact details of YouTube's subscriber service remain a mystery.
In comparison, iTunes offers you the ability to transfer your programs,
once
downloaded physically to your hard drive, to various Apple devices, and
Amazon lets you move programs to your Tivo. Content purchased on iTunes
remains the property
of the purchaser (which might not necessarily be the case with
Amazon...Orwell,
anyone?). Whether or not users, who've become accustomed to either free
videos or outright ownership, are willing to pay for something as
tenuous as streaming rights remains to be seen.
As of right now, it appears that Google's betting they are.
Wierdninja
December 01, 2009 at 6:15pm
Paid content from Youtube will never work. It started out as a place where people could share videos for free. Youtube will never translate to a paid service, especially for content that you cannot download and keep. It'll never work. I for one would never pay for it. I use Netflix and Itunes, everything else pales in comparison. Youtube is a fun place for free video content. Changing it will kill it. Oh well, it was cool while it lasted.
J Keirn-Swanson
December 02, 2009 at 6:40pm
I'm on the fence about whether it will work or not, but I'm waaaaayyy leaning toward "not."
I know I for one, like you, will not pay for something I can't keep from an online service. I think they're counting more on people wanting to rent like a movie from a brick and mortar store, but if I can't watch it as much as I want to and can't transfer it to another location (seriously, who wants to sit at their desk even MORE?), then I'm not all that interested, frankly.
Now if I could just watch Hulu on my iPhone.
