Has anyone tried used the YouTube rental service?

I haven't used it myself, but I did a lot of research on it a couple months back. I've heard from numerous people who have used it that they encountered problems that caused their videos to be viewable for free, despite them setting the video up as a on-demand rental. The system doesn't seem to be working very well, and it's screwing lots of indie filmmakers.

Combine that with the fact that YouTube users aren't usually looking for anything longer than 5-15 minutes (the YouTube mentality of "quick, funny, free!" is hard to set aside when watching a feature film on YouTube), and I think it's generally a bad idea.

Just my opinion, obviously. YMMV!
 
many of the first films to use this (during sundance last year) did not do well. and they took a beating from users upset that someone would charge for a youtube video. people have been trained to think of youtube as a free for all and that's a massive hurdle for content creators trying to use it for video on demand rentals.
 
I have not. We were part of YouTube Gold or YouTube HD now which is the commercial supported version of feature films with our Documentary Beat Makers. The financial impact for us wasn't huge (Hulu does better for us in this area) but it did get many views in this format.

I'm not sure a fee for YouTube download is going to work just now...perhaps more time will allow this variation on their model to work itself out.

-M
 
Youtube and money don't even belong in the same sentence.

Unless you were getting paid well from being a youtube partner like Fred.
 
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