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Celestial [soylentnews.org] writes:

Amazon unveiled a service that allows users to post videos and earn royalties from them [the-digital-reader.com], putting a big bulls eye on Alphabet's YouTube.

The service, called Amazon Video Direct [amazon.com], will make the uploaded videos available to rent or own, to view free with ads, or be packaged together and offered as an add-on subscription.

Amazon will pay content creators 50% of the revenue earned from rental receipts or sale of the videos, according to the company's license agreement. For ad-supported videos, the creators will get half of the net ad receipts.

Amazon's fast-growing Prime loyalty program already offers original TV programming and access to digital entertainment products such as Prime Music and Prime Video, as well as one-hour delivery of purchases, for an annual fee of $99.

YouTube offers a free, ad-supported service as well as a $10-per-month subscription option called YouTube Red. Amazon, though, has a long way to go to catch up with YouTube, the go-to venue for video on the internet since 2005.

Users of Amazon's service will be able to make their videos available in the US, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom. and Japan. The company has also signed up several partners for the service, including Conde Nast, the Guardian, Mashable and toymaker Mattel.

Amazon can throw a lot of money behind their new Video Direct service, but I don't know how well it will do. YouTube is pretty well thoroughly entrenched in the online video space.

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