Popular social video-sharing site YouTube seems to have embarked on a path to make money with the launch of a new e-commerce merchandise store called, somewhat unimaginatively, the Merch Store.
“With 800 million people per month coming to YouTube, you have a pretty big stage to share your music, and now we’re adding features to also make YouTube your box office, merchandise table and music store,” Christian Weitenberner, YouTube’s Senior Technical Account Manager, wrote in a blog post.
“We’re launching a feature called the Merch Store that will allow YouTube partners to offer fans merchandise directly on your channel. Fans will be able to buy artists’ merchandise, digital downloads, concert tickets and even unique experiences like meetups. These features are made possible through affiliates like Topspin for merchandise, concert tickets and experiences; Songkick for concerts; and iTunes and Amazon for music downloads. We’ll be rolling out the Merch Store to music partners globally over the coming weeks,” Weitenberner added.
With 3 billion videos viewed per day, the move is set to reap serious dividends for the video streaming service. “We’ve also made a few changes to make it easier for indie labels to become YouTube partners and share revenue when their music is played, even in user generated content,” the blog post said.
Although the post did not reveal a breakdown of the financial split for these transactions, analysts expect it to take a small cut of sales to cover costs. The online retail push is being seen as the latest in YouTube’s e-commerce designs – the site started offering online customers the option to rent movies and stream them via YouTube earlier this year in May.