Okay, so Netflix hasn’t quite quoted Regina George to YouTube yet, but no one would blame the company if they did. AppleMagazine has been covering the latest from YouTube’s bizarre ventures as of late.
What with the launch of Victoria Beckham’s YouTube channel and the announcement of the movie streaming service, YouTube seems consistently less interested in showcasing content from unknown voices and appears to be going into what will no doubt be rather paltry competition with Netflix.
Playing catch-up…
YouTube has been offering original scripted content to its premium users for some time now – but, given that the company’s number of premium users stands at a pretty pathetic few million worldwide, we wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t heard about this original content.
Those few million users pay YouTube $11.99 per month for the apparent benefits of an ad-free site and access to the Google Play music streaming app, a rival of Spotify.
Meanwhile, Netflix plays host to some 117 million users, who pay a starting price of $9.99 per month for an an ad-free service which allows them to browse millions of popular movies and TV shows, many of which have been created by their in-house production team.
How original…
The once-innovative video sharing network hopes that, by 2020, it will be offering its YouTube Originals to every user worldwide, even if the average YouTube user is more interested in watching the latest music videos on Vevo or finding a vlog to help them with their latest DIY project.
This seems to be the latest in a string of efforts by YouTube to keep up with online streaming competitors. Quite why YouTube would even consider them competitors, however, is something of a mystery.
Given that Netflix and YouTube offer totally different services or at least different services on different levels, it would be like Target attempting to compete with Prada.
In other words: Pointless and impractical.
