YouTube Opens Up Video-Rental Store

YouTube is plowing ahead with video rentals, despite initial results being less than encouraging. The Google-owned video site has now opened up a rental store to house all of the available material. The range of videos offered has grown considerably since the January tests, but it’s not exactly exhaustive. Videos rent for $0.99 to $3.99 and range from full-length movies to TV-show episodes.

The video site hasn’t made any official announcement, but had said that it will expand its catalogue when it first launches video rentals. And the move hasn’t been kept a secret either. “When we announced YouTube Rentals in January we said we would be creating a destination after more partners joined the program. To date, we have nearly 500 partners that have joined our Rental program,” a YouTube representative told the NewTeeVee blog.

The content is pretty varied, but with a heavy sway towards niche works. You can find some mainstream, full-length films like Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs or Lord of War, but stuff like Bollywood movies or Japanese anime top the Popular Shows charts. There’s nothing to make the big guys like Netlfix, Amazon or Apple sweat just yet and the pricing may be a bit off too. TV-episode downloads usually sell for $0.99, but, with YouTube, you’re only getting them for 24 to 72 hours.

However, if there’s one thing that YouTube proved, it was that you could become quite popular with niche content, which user-generated videos pretty much still are. The long tail could end up being a successful approach for YouTube, though it will need a much, much bigger catalogue for that. As for the financial side, it’s probably too early to tell. YouTube’s initial tests weren’t that successful, with movies bringing in paltry sums. But the rental store may pick up steam in time and, with YouTube’s huge monthly audience, there’s certainly a lot of room to grow.