YouTube Reportedly Launching a ‘Channel Store’ for Video Streaming Services

YouTube is planning to launch a new marketplace allowing users to subscribe to multiple video streaming services without leaving the YouTube app.

As The Wall Street Journal(Opens in a new window) reports, people familiar with the plan state YouTube refers to the new marketplace internally as a “channel store.” It’s similar to what rival services such as Amazon Prime Video and Roku already do—allowing users to sign up for third-party streaming subscriptions with a few taps of the screen or TV remote.

The channel store project has apparently been in development for the past 18 months and is expected to launch by the fall. In the meantime, YouTube needs to convince the streaming platforms that this is worth signing up to, and in return agreeing to give YouTube a cut of the revenue generated. It’s expected that YouTube will agree terms for featuring in the channel store on a per-partner basis, meaning the revenue cut could vary wildly per streaming service.

When touting this new marketplace to partners, YouTube can argue that its video platform is already used by the streaming services to get trailers in front of consumers, so why not remove the friction and allow them to subscribe then and there? YouTube also has over 2 billion active users(Opens in a new window), offering streaming services a huge audience of potential new subscribers worldwide.

YouTube TV already allows additional subscriptions services to be added, but the $64.99 per month cost means only a small subset of YouTube users have that option. This new channel store would be available to all YouTube users, and YouTube clearly believes consumers will be happy to sign up to services using it.