YouTube took the liberty of unveiling a partnership between Google and Paramount that will bring nearly 500 new movie titles to Google Play and YouTube for rental within just a few weeks.
The movies will be available in the United States and Canada. It’s a big win for Android users in these countries but nothing has been said regarding international support in the future. Even the vast majority of Android fanboys will admit that when it comes to content like movies and TV shows, the OS has yet to catch up with the iTunes offerings on iOS. Google isn’t giving up though.
In a blog post, YouTube writes:
With the addition of Paramount, we now have five of the six major studios and over ten independent movie studios offering nearly 9,000 movies for rent to millions of people around the world. It’s still early days for us, and we’ll continue adding new titles and expanding our service to more countries this year.
9,000 movies doesn’t seem like a lot, but I give kudos to Google Play for actually having titles people have heard of. Netflix users like myself are all too familiar with the experience of browsing through the large library of movies but only recognizing a small percentage of them. Pricing for rentals is fair too, ranging from $1.99 to $3.99 depending on demand compared to the iTunes pricing model of $2.99 to $4.99.
Some of the Paramount movies are available on YouTube and Google Play immediately. The rest will begin to appear over the course of a few months.