Keeping up with its promise, Google has introduced the fan funding feature for YouTube channel owners to request the audience to make a donation to keep the channel going.
This could be a way for channel owners to get funding from subscribers who they are connected to personally. Google will get a part of the revenue thus generated and all the payments will be processed through Google Wallet. Currently, the feature is available only for channel owners in US, Australia, Japan and Mexico.
Turning on this feature will display a small icon in the top left corner of the video while it is playing and on hovering it will display a banner with the option to make a donation. Clicking the ‘Support’ button will pop a message on top of the window from where users can decide how much they want to donate and proceed with the transaction.
As of now, the feature is available for web users and only for those users using the Android version of the app. The company is expected to bring it to other countries and platforms in the near future.
Rumours have it that the Google owned YouTube will soon start a subscription based music service. However, the company hasn’t official commented on the matter.
