Amazon to take on Youtube with video posting service

Amazon has revealed a new video posting service that will allow users to make money from royalties, advertising and other methods, putting the online retail giant in direct competition with Google-owned Youtube.

Amazon already runs an online video streaming service and produces some original content of its own. In the US, for instance, it recently launched a daily live fashion show, Style Code Live, which has been described as a mash-up between QVC and Youtube and which allows users to shop fashion trends as they watch.

This latest venture, Amazon Video Direct, targets "professional video producers" and the requirements state each post must be high definition and have closed-loop captioning for the hard of hearing. It is not yet clear whether members of the public will be allowed to post as they are able to do on Youtube.

The service offers a number of routes for video producers to generate revenue: they can either sell or rent their programmes on Amazon or make advertising-supported videos available to all Amazon customers (not just subscribers to Amazon's "Prime" service), which would be the first time Amazon has given away videos. Or they can offers videos to Amazon Prime members and receive royalty payments based on how many times the content is streamed, or as part of an add-on subscription.

Amazon says it will distribute $1m a month to the makers of the 100 most popular programmes viewed by Prime members each month (a similar method of reward it employs to self-publishers of e-books). Toy maker Mattel, The Guardian, Condé Nast and Mashable are among the launch partners.

The service is currently only available in the US, UK, Germany, Austria, and Japan, which gives it a far more limited reach at this stage than its main rival Youtube which is available worldwide.