Google's YouTube to launch subscription model in few months: Report

Google is set to launch a subscription model for YouTube in a few months, CNBC quoted Robert Kyncl, the online video service’s head of content and business operations as saying at the Code/Media conference. The company was “fine-tuning the experience”, Kyncl said at the conference in California. YouTube has been exploring a paid, ad-free version of its service for some time. The company launched a pilot program in May 2013 that allowed individual content creators to charge consumers a subscription fee to access a particular “channel” of videos. The plan would represent a significant change for the world’s No. 1 online video, whose free videos, often accompanied by short commercials, attract more than 1 billion users a month. Reports last year revealed that Google is remixing the music on its YouTube video site with the addition of ad-free subscription service “Music Key” and a new format designed to make it easier to find millions of songs that can still be played for free. Reuters