Sources: YouTube plans to launch a “channel store” for streaming services as early as Fall 2022 and is talking with partners about subscription revenue sharing
Ultracompetitive U.S. market is prompting streaming services to seek new ways to find subscribers
Context & Ripple Effects
This has been a seven-year build for YouTube. After seeking streaming rights for its Red subscription service in late 2015 and working on Unplugged, a cable-channels-over-the-internet bundle, YouTube was reported in early 2020 to be weighing a competitor to Amazon and Apple TV channels for reselling premium video subscriptions. The channel store now planned for as early as Fall 2022 is that idea moving into execution, with revenue-sharing talks attached.
The timing matters because the WSJ frames the U.S. streaming market as ultracompetitive, pushing services to find subscribers wherever they can — which turns YouTube's massive installed audience into distribution inventory that streamers may have to pay for.
First-order effects
- Streaming services gain a new storefront inside YouTube's app, giving them a subscriber-acquisition channel alongside Amazon Channels and Apple TV Channels — and YouTube gains a cut of subscriptions it doesn't produce itself.
Second-order effects
- Amazon and Apple face a third major tech platform selling rival services' subscriptions, pressuring their own channel-store terms and revenue splits at renegotiation time.
- If the store launches, it sets up a two-track YouTube video business — paid third-party subscriptions here, free ad-supported channels there, per the later FAST-channel hub test against Roku, Pluto TV, and Tubi.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward big-platform gatekeepers consolidating as the default billing and discovery layer for streaming, with services increasingly renting reach from YouTube, Amazon, and Apple rather than acquiring subscribers directly — a structure where whoever owns the front door sets the economics.
The trend: Video platforms are evolving from single-service apps into channel stores and ad-supported hubs, making distribution itself the product as the U.S. streaming market saturates.