Vimeo has long been locked in an online war with video hosting giant YouTube, and now they’re taking on another media giant in Netflix. Vimeo has announced they’re launching their own paid subscription based streaming video service.
Earlier this year, rumors began swirling that Vimeo had something like this in mind when they acquired VHX, a subscription video platform.
One of the biggest advantages that Vimeo has in this launch, CEO Joey Levin said, is that the platform is already home to 115 million videos and over a billion monthly video views. This means they’re not starting from scratch.
Vimeo already has some monetization aspects, which makes it a popular landing spot for aspiring filmmakers and other artists. Millions of Vimeo customers have purchased content already on the service, so this isn’t totally uncharted territory. This leads Vimeo to believe they won’t have to fund content like Netflix and Amazon Prime, but can rely on people already making it.
YouTube is currently testing a subscription model, but it’s not going over too well with fans, so it’s not clear how Vimeo will fare.
