YouTube Red launched last October for $10 per month. The big headlining features of the service are the ad-free videos as well as the ability to play videos in the background (and save for offline viewing). But another big feature that YouTube had promised was the original content that would be coming to the service, and be exclusive to YouTube Red subscribers. YouTube announced that it was pairing up a number of their most popular stars with Hollywood directors to produce some movies as well as shows for the service. On Wednesday, four of those shows became available to all YouTube Red subscribers.
The four shows that are available, as of today include Lilly Singh’s ‘A Trip to Unicorn Island’, as well as Rooster Teeth and Fullscreen Films ‘Lazer Team’, PewDiePie’s own ‘Scare PewDiePie and finally AwesomenessTV’s ‘Dance Camp’. All of these YouTubers are extremely popular, and have millions and millions of subscribers and over a billion views. Take PewDiePie for example, he has over 42 million subscribers, and over 11 billion views in just under 6 years of being on YouTube. Pretty astounding right? That’s more viewers than some cable TV shows, to put it in perspective.
There’s plenty more original content coming to YouTube Red, this is just the first batch of shows that are available on the service. YouTube Red is going to be continuing to bring in all sorts of new original content for their subscribers. YouTube Red is a way for YouTube to leverage the stars that their platform has created, and also bring in some extra cash. While allowing users to get rid of ads without using Ad blockers, which cost the company money. And with YouTube being owned by Google – an ad company – ads are super important for YouTube to continue to thrive.
If you haven’t already, you can subscribe to YouTube Red, everyone will get a free 30-day trial, after that it’ll be $9.99/month. This is bundled with Google Play Music Unlimited as well. So if you subscribe to Google Play Music Unlimited, you’ll get YouTube Red as well for one payment of $9.99 per month. Which is definitely worth it in the long run.