YouTube is reportedly planning to launch an online store for streaming services and has renewed talks with entertainment companies about participating in the platform, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The company hopes the new platform, which it is referring to internally as a “channel store” and which has been in the works for at least 18 months, could be available as early as this Autumn.
A channel store makes perfect sense for YouTube, and it already has some of the platform in place. YouTube TV is to some extent already a channel store where, depending on which market you reside in, you can subscribe to streamers including HBO Max, Starz, Showtime and other channels and services from within the YouTube TV interface. You can also buy and rent movies directly on YouTube, and of course watch hours of content for free.
Where YouTube, along with many other tech companies, has struggled is in monetising home-grown content in competiiton with the likes of Netflix. It has long sought ways to make and offer more premium content, including its ill-fated YouTube Originals.
Audiences can already head to YouTube to watch clips and highlights of TV shows and movies, so by making its relationships with major Hollywood and European content producers and broadcasters more official it might just find the solution to its lack of premium content problem, without the effort and cost of having to actually make it.
