Will YouTube be able to woo with Originals?
YouTube Originals has released over 60 projects to date, and plans to release more than 50 new shows in 2019
New Delhi: YouTube is set to launch its first show as part of YouTube Originals in India. The programme will be supported by advertisements. The first show, called ARRived, is a search for the best music talent in India in partnership with composer A.R. Rahman. The show will be released in the next three-four weeks, said Satya Raghavan, head of entertainment at YouTube India. He believes that the “timing is just perfect...because of what has happened in our ecosystem".
Online video today accounts for 75% of all mobile traffic, while data usage has increased to 8GB per month per subscriber. The result: From 16 YouTube channels with more than one million subscribers in India in 2014 to over 300 channels with over one million subscribers each in 2018, YouTube now has 245 million unique users per month.
YouTube Originals faces competition from well-entrenched services like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix that have already rolled out Indian shows, focusing on original Indian content. While Amazon and Netflix operate on a subscription-based model, Originals is free in India right now, although globally YouTube has launched a subscription service called YouTube Premium.
“Our DNA is built around partnerships, so a lot of competitors are our partners we work closely with, some of them are large advertisers of ours, some of them are large content partners. So for us, it is about growing the video pie not just for our own creators but for the entire online video industry for sure," insists Raghavan.
Globally, YouTube Originals has released over 60 projects to date, and plans to release more than 50 new shows in 2019.
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