Rather than building its own streaming service, YouTube is reportedly readying an offer that would allow other streaming services to sell subscriptions.

At the weekend, the Washington Post citing people close to recent discussions, reported that YouTube has been working on a so-called channel store for the last 18 months. As per the report, this channel store would operate in a similar manner to Amazon and Apple.

This would of course mean that YouTube would more than likely take a cut of subscriptions that come through this channel store.

Now, this is a move that make a lot of sense. YouTube’s reach is gargantuan and streaming services are already using the platform to share trailers and other content. Being able to tell viewers they can subscribe to the service right in the comments without leaving YouTube, could help drive subscription take up.

Could this help? Well as WaPo points out, when HBO Max offered its service through Amazon Prime Video, it accounted for 4.5 million of 70 million subscribers. Diversifying your revenue stream can be good but it’s not a silver bullet to the head of waning profits.

However, even if YouTube does launch this storefront it’s no guarantee that subscribers will flock to streaming platforms. The streaming landscape is flooded and consumers are largely fed up with the direction the industry has adopted. These days, it’s not uncommon to need multiple subscriptions in order to watch the content you want.

While this YouTube storefront could help make services more visible we’d argue that visibility isn’t the problem. For example, while Disney+ offers a great selection of content, that selection is limited to content that Disney owns. While platforms are able to license content from others, that is becoming more and more rare.

Whether YouTube is able to drive more subscriptions to ailing platforms is unclear but if it can get a slice of the streaming pie without having to launch a streaming service, good for YouTube.