As Google expands its investments in content, YouTube is
exploring the idea of offering some channels for a monthly subscription fee.
Ad Age first
reported the effort, citing anonymous sources, which said some channels might
charge a subscription fee of $1 to $5 a month and that around 25 services might
launch as early as the second quarter of 2012.
YouTube did not immediately respond a request for a comment
on the effort or what kind of content they might be looking for.
Company executives have, however, been talking about a
number of different business models for the YouTube channels for some time. In
February 2012, during the AllThingsD media conference, YouTube CEO Salar
Kamangar noted that they were exploring subscription models and he made similar
comments to Reuters in June 2012.
