YouTube to launch movie streaming service by next week?

According to reports online YouTube, the world’s most popular video streaming service, will take its first foray into the premium video sharing industry. According to a report from Business Insider, YouTube will be launching its movie on demand service either this week or next, and by movie we mean Hollywood blockbusters and films that are sold on DVDs – not “movies” by YouTube stars – those videos can still be watched for free. Business Insider claims that YouTube will be making an official announcement very soon.

This new service would be a direct competitor of Apple’s iTunes due to the fact that it will be using a transaction model instead of a subscription model. Apparently YouTube has gotten almost all the major movie studios onboard with them with only Paramount and Fox deciding to stay out of the deal for now. If these reports turn out to be true, at least Google is getting somewhere with their video streaming business – too bad we can’t say the same about Google Music.

It looks like Netflix will need to step up its game to stay in the business – with consumers having so many different options to access the latest movies faster than its service can provide them, they might be in deep trouble.

George Wong
Categories: Videos (web), Web
Tags: Movies, on demand, streaming, Video, vod, YouTube