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YouTube and a New Movie Rental Service in Play
Friday, April 29, 2011 at 1:47PM 
Would you rent movies on YouTube if it had a wider selection? This may be something worth considering if you are among the millions who visit this site daily because the available titles may soon expand to include major Hollywood hits, which is why it is my selection for the letter ‘Y’ in the A to Z Challenge. The popular online video website YouTube plans to enter deeper into the movie business with regards to distribution. It intends to offer an on-demand service for lots of mainstream movies that will allow users to pay for titles that they want to stream online.
An announcement about the launch of this service is expected to be made within the coming weeks, according to The Wrap while TechCrunch says that YouTube already has a video on-demand service called YouTube movies where users can rent titles for $2.99 each.
Major Hollywood studios including Sony Entertainment, Universal, Warner Bros. and independent studio Lionsgate have jumped on board for this new.....or maybe not new and just growing service. However, other studios such as Paramount, 20th Century Fox and Disney have refused to license their movies to YouTube at this time for the website’s new on-demand service due to piracy concerns; specifically, its support for pirate sites via advertising, SEO and other forms.
All of these major and independent Hollywood studios currently have video-on-demand deals with Apple’s iTunes movie rental store, so it is understandable if some of the companies want to remain with a current service that is popular, already has a customer base and is clearly anti-piracy.
The new, or expanding or whatever YouTube service reportedly puts the video site in competition with iTunes but this may be a hard sell because both services are viewed from different perspectives among audiences. Consumers who visit YouTube are accustomed to watching videos free of charge while these same consumers already expect to pay for services while browsing the iTunes movie rental store.
YouTube is confident that their service will generate significant revenue to justify having the feature available because it makes it convenient for their users to be able to watch a movie without leaving the website. There may be something worthwhile to this notion and it could work out well for all parties involved....YouTube, Hollywood Studios and Consumers.
Its success may depend on pricing and how large the movie selection is for users to choose from, which is a factor that caused Blockbuster’s Total Access service to experience some difficulties gaining customers when compared to its rival, Netflix. The competition could get interesting if YouTube keeps the $2.99 pricing that TechCrunch says it charges for movie rentals, when adds more mainstream movies from the studios that they reportedly have new deals with.
The current movie rental prices on iTunes varies for users depending on the film. "Inception" is $3.99 to rent, which gives YouTube a slight advantage if the online video site does expand it's movie offerings. However, "Fast & Furious" is currently $2.99 to rent on iTunes and it gets even better for movie fans....the iTunes rental price for "Transformers" is just 99 cents. I don’t think that YouTube can compete with iTunes on any other level, especially since the Apple company and Netflix seems to be dominating the online movie rental market.
Then again, this may be the first time in a long time that YouTube rolls out a direct way to generate revenue from its users. The website doesn’t have to try to gain customers because it already has them. So long as these movie rentals do not come with Pre-roll advertisements like many of the TV show content and music video content on YouTube, I think the on-demand movie rental service may be worth trying...if for nothing more than to experience a different option that may be better (or worse, but that is the point...to find out) than the movie rental services, if any, that you already use.
Maybe this is a new on-demand service that YouTube plans to offer or maybe the online video website is just giving its movie rental service a much needed makeover. Whatever happens, YouTube may continue to be the king of online video...but whether it will also be the king of online movie rentals remains to be seen.
What do YOU think about this new proposed, or expanded YouTube on-demand service?
Would YOU rent movies on YouTube?
Do YOU think a larger inventory of mainstream titles for the YouTube on-demand service will affect iTunes movie rental sales?
How much do YOU think YouTube should charge for mainstream on-demand movie rentals?
Technorati Tags: a+to+z+challenge, youtube+movies, watch+movies+on+youtube, youtube+movie+rentals, youtube+on+demand, youtube+video+on+demand, youtube+movies+on+demand, a+to+z+blogging+challenge, a+to+z+blog+challenge, a+to+z+blogging, a+to+z+blog, a+to+z+april+challenge, april+blog+challenge, youtube+movie+rental+service
Reader Comments (2)
Interesting. Thank you for sharing. I'm so glad I found your blog! I'm stopping by from the A to Z challenge and I look forward to visiting again.
It's an interesting idea and one that they are probably doing just to catch up with the rest of the market i.e. Itunes and other media services. I probably wouldn't rent from Youtube as I would rather watch a film in surrounded sound and through a large screen, not sitting at my desk through laptop speakers.
I could affect Itunes, but Itunes is a much larger and broader service then Youtube in the grand scheme of things, so I don't think Apple have to worry about that too soon unless they start selling songs and making apps, then they should.
I'm not sure if $2.99 is cheap or what for a film as I'm not sure what the whole currency rate is, but if it works out at around 99p then that is definitely cheap and probably well worth it, especially if the films start to get streamed in HD. Yet I suspect it will be a lot more then 99p anyway.