Gadgetory

it's highly unlikely you'll have to pay to watch videos of cats playing piano but YouTube will soon announce plans to let some channels charge a monthly fee for their content a move that may alienate some users I think nowadays there's enough free content out there that nobody's gonna pay for it most content is expected to remain free of charge early online reports say YouTube will initially offer 50 channels with each channel subscription costing as little as two dollars a month YouTube's really made an investment in what they call premium content so what you're likely to end up paying for it shows that are incredibly popular already there are networks like The Young Turks which I think has an aggregate of a billion views people may already be interested in paying for that but they're also creating shows with well-known celebrities with people who you already want to watch and that's the kind of content they're going to ask you to pay for in a statement youtube said we're looking into creating a subscription platform that could bring even more great content to youtube for our users to enjoy and provide our partners with another vehicle to generate revenue with paid subscriptions YouTube would compete with the likes of Netflix Hulu and Amazon which have successfully gained millions of paid subscribers and created original content what we're seeing now is almost the creation of new kinds of TV networks and each of them like the existing TV networks has their own distinct programming the BBC has already said it would not be introducing fees for its youtube channel youtube will reportedly offer to subscription options with and without advertising that could make a difference for some I think it was fine as is what the ads are pretty crazy it would be nice to have lessons and there's another benefit for users so you may pay for netflix and Netflix original programming but those same shows might not be on hulu they might not be on YouTube so if you have favorites on YouTube or shows on YouTube that you think you want to watch specifically this is a good way to kind of put together an ala carte package of programming which you cannot do right now on cable in other words a cable cord cutters dream in San Francisco I'm Sumi das cnet.com for CBS News