Google reportedly planning monthly subscription service for YouTube

According to an e-mail sent out to Google partners today, the Mountain View-based search giant will soon be offering a monthly subscription service to YouTube, which would offer an ad-free experience.

The e-mail says: "Your fans want choices. Not only do they want to watch what they want, whenever they want, anywhere, and on any device they choose, they want YouTube features built specifically with their needs in mind. Over the past several months, we've taken bold new steps to bring these experiences to life. Since inviting hundreds of thousands of fans into our YouTube Music Key Beta, we've seen tremendous engagement. And we've seen an equally enthusiastic response for our new YouTube Kids app, designed to give families a simpler and safer video-viewing experience- it's already crossed 2 million installations in less than one month.

We're excited to build on this momentum by taking another big step in favor of choice: offering fans an ads-free version of YouTube for a monthly fee. By creating a new paid offering, we'll generate a new source of revenue that will supplement your fast growing advertising revenue".

We should expect YouTube to unveil its monthly subscription service before the end of the year, with a sure to be competitive price.