Google Inc.’s YouTube online video service announced on Wednesday that it will offer five films from the Sundance Film Festival (2009 and 2010) for rental from this Friday until January 31st to U.S. users. In addition to the titles offered in partnership with the Sundance Film Festival, the site will offer a small collection of rental videos from other U.S. partners across different industries, including health and education, in the weeks after.
“These are early days and in the coming weeks we’ll also invite a small group of partners across other industries, in addition to independent film, to participate in this new option. Anything that brings more content to the YouTube community is a good thing,” the YouTube blog reads. “And making content available for rent will give our partners unprecedented control over the distribution of their work.”
The announcement states that owners can decide the price of their videos and the rental duration, when and where their content is available and will keep 100 percent of the rights. The site will be seeking more Independent filmmakers to participate in the rental program as part of its “Filmmakers Wanted” campaign at the festival.
Result for: new option
During his speech at the “D6: All Things Digital conference”, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has been quoted as saying that his company has been working on a pay-per-view streaming service and that the new option should be launching within the next few weeks.
The service is “meant for a subset of people willing to pay to view sans ads.” It is also clear that the service will be in addition to the to the digital downloads offered by Amazon Unbox.
Bezos also added that his company is not trying take down the market leader iTunes but that “sensible owners want alternatives” and with that statement he is very correct.
It should be interesting to see how well this service works and we will keep you updated.
