Google is all set up to introduce pay per view rental services on its video sharing site Youtube in India. This is really great news for the entertainment industry which is facing the problem of piracy for a long time.
Youtube has been rolling out the service in different countries for the past two years. The service was recently launched in Australia, Korea and Japan. Now Google is planning to launch the service in India and is in talks with the various media house in the country.
Gautam Anand, Director, Content Partnerships, Google Asia Pacific mentioned that rental model is a natural step forward for them as many Indian production houses are already uploading lot of content to youtube. Offering premium paid content through Youtube would be a logical step forward. The major roadblock they are facing currently is setting up a seamless payment mechanism
How would it help the industry?
We all know that the entertainment industry in India is currently dealing with the problem of piracy for a long time. Major revenues of film-makers are lost because of illegal sharing of movies over the internet. The major cause behind this is that viewers don’t have many “cost-effective” options before them if they want to watch movies. Hence they resort to torrent downloads.
Now if this service is introduced, and the rental rates are not too high, then many people will rent the streaming content and this would help in curbing the piracy to some extent. The profits from the rentals would be shared by Google and the media houses. Thus this would increase the industry’s revenues considerably.
Obviously, the internet is also another roadblock, because without decent connections, watching Youtube videos would be a real pain. However, internet speeds are also increasing in India and now have crossed average of 1mbps for the first time. So, that problem is also getting resolved slowly
How would it help the viewers?
There are people in the country who are ready to pay for the content, but there aren’t many sources from where they can rent the videos. YouTube’s service can easily become a popular medium to rent videos in India if properly publicized.
Mr. Gautam Anand also said that Youtube would be trying to partner with regional video producers. According to him, 30% of all the television content in India is in regional languages. So this is a great market for Youtube to tap.
It is to be seen that how fast Google can actually introduce the Youtube Pay-per-view service in India.