YouTube presents new features

YouTube has revealed plans for several new features, including the ability for channel owners to make money by soliciting donations from their fans.

YouTube Fan Funding will be tested soon with a limited number of channels in the US, Mexico, Japan and Australia, with YouTubers in those countries able to apply for a space on the test scheme.

"Fans will be able to contribute money to support your channel at any time, for any reason," explained a blog post by YouTube execs Matthew Glotzbach and Oliver Heckmann following its announcement at the VidCon conference in Anaheim.

The new feature will make YouTube a rival for crowdfunding services including Kickstarter and Indiegogo, although its tip-jar structure makes it more of a direct competitor to Patreon, the US startup that recently raised $15m to help YouTubers and other artists raise money from fans.

The company has also launched an Android app for YouTubers called YouTube Creator Studio, which they can use to access their statistics, respond to comments and get notifications on how their channels are performing. YouTube says it will also launch for iOS in the near future.

YouTube's burgeoning community of gamers are the focus for another new feature: support for videos at up to 60 frames per second.

"Your video game footage with crazy high frame rates will soon look as awesome on YouTube as it does when you’re playing, when we launch support for 48 and even 60 frames per second in the coming months," explained the blog post.

The 100 most popular games channels on YouTube generated nearly 3.5bn video views in May alone, according to recent research from Tubefilter and OpenSlate, so this new feature will be widely welcomed.

YouTube is also planning to tap its community of more than 1bn viewers to provide translated subtitles for videos. "In the coming months, your fans will be able to submit translations in any language based on the subtitles or captions you’ve created, helping you reach even more viewers," explained Glotzbach and Heckmann.

Channels Barely Political, Fine Art-Tips, Got Talent Global and Unicoos are already testing the new user-generated subtitling. It matches a feature that has been available in some time in south-east Asian online video service Viki.

Other new YouTube features include more songs and now also sound effects in its licensed Audio Library for creators; plans to help them link to one another from within the descriptions on their videos; better annotations – or "Info Cards" – that will work across desktop, smartphones and tablets - and more ways for YouTubers to build playlists.

This follows announcements earlier in the month of a YouTube-branded music show on US satellite radio service SiriusXM, a larger video player on the YouTube website, and beefed-up messaging and commenting features on the service.

YouTube is also working on a subscription streaming music service to rival Spotify and Deezer, although the company has attracted strong criticism from independent labels over the way it's seeking to sign licensing deals for it.


/The Guardian/