Google's YouTube in Talks to Let Video Creators Charge Viewers

Apparently, Google's YouTube video site has been in talks to allow video creators to charge viewers to access their content sometime later this year, said people familiar with the discussions.

The move would add a new revenue stream for YouTube and its thousands of content partners, and it could potentially help the site lure new video creators who want a subscription model rather than rely only on advertising, these people said. YouTube executives have long discussed such a possibility publicly, so the discussions aren't a surprise. "We have long maintained that different content requires different types of payment models," said a YouTube spokesman. "There are a lot of our content creators that think they would benefit from subscriptions, so we're looking at that." He declined to comment further.