Downloads are coming to YouTube, including downloads at a price

Though there was speculation for some time now, it has been confirmed that YouTube is now offering downloads, including ones you can pay for - per the following article: http://mashable.com/2009/02/12/youtube-paid-downloads/

The significance of this development is that YouTube is altering its current model, that has been successful by many measures, to one that will potentially leverage its users with an opportunity to generate money - at least for someone else if not for YouTube directly yet. Partners could chose to offer their video downloads for free or for a small fee paid through Google Checkout.

Several popular YouTube channels are testing paid downloads currently. The biggest challenge will be convincing people to pay for YouTube downloads after they've gotten very comfortable viewing content on it for free. With the significant amount of free content available on YouTube, and the internet overall for that matter, partners will need to have an attractive proposition to convince users to pay for a download.

Beyond YouTube, I've seen other online portals also recently start to offer downloads for a price. The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) hosts a website where I've gotten comfortable viewing fights for free, and they just recently started to offer downloads for a price. I can tell you personally I wasn't ready for this, and I've decided to just watch less UFC fights if I miss them on TV or Pay-per-view.

It will be interesting to see how successful downloads for a price turn out for YouTube.