First episode released on YouTube
13 episodes, including the first episode of the first season of The Joy of Painting from 1983 are released on YouTube. Ross (in the episode):
For the next 13 weeks, I’ll be your host as we experience the joy of painting. I think each of us sometime during our life has wanted to paint a picture.
YouTube Red announcement
YouTube announces YouTube Red, a $9.99/month subscription service that lets users watch videos without ads, save videos for offline viewing, and, continue playing videos in the background while they switch apps. The service will start on October 28. The YouTube Red membership also lets users sign into the company’s Gaming and Music apps. U.S. viewers can sign up for a free one-month trial later this month.
YogDiscovery
Yogscast member Mark Turpin makes a Reddit post announcing YogDiscovery, a new plan for Yogscast members to get paid by game developers to cover their games. The developers agree to give them a small portion of the extra revenue driven by the Yogscast if they make videos about their game. He says this is a way for YouTubers to guarantee income from covering unpopular games:
Our entertainers earn a livelihood from advertising directly based on how many views they get. This motivates them to create content around games that are popular – e.g. Minecraft or Garry’s Mod…YogDiscovery allows them to partially negate the financial risk from playing games that aren’t guaranteed views and be more genuine about playing the games they want to play.
YouTube Awards
YouTube announces a feature called the YouTube Awards to recognize the best videos uploaded in 2006. Users can vote for their favorite videos and the winners will receive a trophy and recognition for their videos. Jamie Byrne, head of product marketing at YouTube, says it is unclear whether this will be an annual event or not:
We want to see how the community responds to it, but we can see this being something that grows as we continue to grow and becomes a bigger and more exciting event in the future.