YouTube is already a place for people to watch entertaining content. However, it appears that the company wants to take that to the next level. According to The Wall Street Journal (via Android Central), YouTube could set up its own store to sign up for and manage their subscription services.
This store, dubbed the “Online Store”, will be a central hub for people to browse and buy subscriptions to different video streaming services. That way, you can manage your services all under one roof. This will make it easier to access those services. It might actually offer you curated recommendations for what to watch (because what company doesn’t do that?).
Though this is news to most people, the company has been working on the store for almost two years, according to people who are close to the matter. It’s been about eighteen months since production started, so the company could have been working on this since February 2020.
As for the launch date, there’s no word that, but it’s expected to be rather soon. Sources say that this online store plans to be launched sometime in the fall. That’s not too far away seeing as fall officially starts next month.
YouTube will let you buy subscription services, how will that work?
In the world of business, the word “free” doesn’t exist. There has to be some money exchanged in some fashion. Thus, the streaming services that will be presented on the YouTube platform will pay a portion of their revenue to the company.
In return, the YouTube store will provide another storefront for people to buy subscriptions. This will, ostensibly, lead to an increase in signups for those services. That mentality is the driving force behind storefronts like these. This is why companies like Apple and Amazon also have services like these.
Right now, we don’t know what services will be featured on this storefront. The usual suspects are services like Netflix, Disney+, and so on. We can expect newer and smaller streaming services to get on board like Paramout+ to be added on. We’ll just need to wait for this store to near its launch for more information.