According to an e-mail sent to YouTube content creators, the video platform is looking to launch a subscription-based service that will permit viewers to bypass pre-roll ads on videos. It's unclear how much the subscription will cost per month, but Bloomberg reports that revenue from the feature will be shared with content creators as a supplement to advertising revenue from viewers who choose not to pay for the subscription service.

An anonymous source told Bloomberg that the service could launch as early as this year.

Venture Beat noted that an update to the terms of service for YouTube program partners said that the company would share 55 percent of its revenue with creators. What an individual creator gets back from that pool would be based on “a percentage of the monthly views or watchtime of all or a subset of participating content in the relevant subscription offering (as determined by YouTube).”

YouTube has been trying to compete with video subscription services like Hulu and Netflix and with music subscription services like Spotify and Rdio for a long time. In 2013, the company gave channels the option to monetize by locking content and offering it in exchange for a monthly subscription. Last November, YouTube launched Music Key, a music subscription service that gave customers access to 30 million songs in Google's Play Music database for $9.99 a month.

According to Sandvine statistics published by Bloomberg, YouTube's share of streaming traffic in North America fell from 19 percent in 2013 to 14 percent in 2014.