YouTube has revealed plans to open a so-called ‘creator space’ in New York next year offering content producers the chance to make use of professional-grade program-making equipment.
The Google-owned site announced the news on Thursday at VidCon, an annual conference for online video producers and fans.
The free-to-use facility is expected to be similar to those already operating in LA, London and Tokyo, giving content producers with a proven track record access to state-of-the-art audio/visual equipment, high-definition video cameras, professional-grade editing suites, green screen studios, rehearsal rooms, and more.
It’ll also serve as a location for creators to meet, share ideas, and organize collaborations. Special events, video screenings, and workshops to help hone skills will also take place there.
The new creator space, which should be up and running by October next year, will be located in the Chelsea Marketplace district of Manhattan and cover around 20,000 to 25,000 square feet.
Kathleen Grace, manager of production and programming for the YouTube creator space in LA, described the company’s facility as “part hippy commune, incubator and studio.”
To use the creator space in, for example, LA, a content producer should have a channel with more than 10,000 subscribers, publish videos on a regular basis, and be pulling in at least 100,000 views per month. Of course, it also helps if you live nearby to one of the facilities.
Still, for successful YouTube producers fed up with working out of their bedroom with lousy, unreliable and low-quality equipment, such facilities could provide a useful stepping stone to more professional and polished productions.
As for YouTube, the company hopes that bringing more quality content to its site will help to boost Web traffic and ultimately lead to an increase in advertising revenue, a proportion of which goes to creators.
According to an estimate by RBC Capital Markets stock analyst Mark Mahaney, advertisers spent in the region $4 billion on YouTube advertising last year, marking an increase of 60 percent over 2011. Mahaney says he believes the video-sharing site will rake in even more in 2013, possibly as much as $5 billion.
[via Media Post]
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