LONDON: YouTube confirmed plans to offer a paid monthly subscription service to its users, possibly before the end of this year.
Similar to those offered by music streaming platforms, the subscription would allow users to enjoy ad-free videos and could generate a major revenue stream for Google, considering that YouTube has over 1 billion unique users.
According to the few official figures released by Google, YouTube clocks in several billion views per day, half of which are from mobile terminals.
Internet users watch hundreds of millions of hours of videos on the platform daily, according to the company.
Here are a few other stats on the service.
– 300 hours of video are added every minute.
– As of January 2015, YouTube is available in 75 countries and 61 languages.
In 2014, the elaborate video for Katy Perry’s single Dark Horse was viewed over 717 million times, setting a new record.
Aside from music videos, the top YouTube upload of 2014 was Mutant Giant Spider Dog, a hidden camera prank in which a dog in a spider costume terrorises strangers. The video scored over 114 million views before the end of the year.
The YouTube video with the record for all-time views remains Psy’s Gangnam Style, with over 2.3 billion hits.
