YouTube videos that look like and sound like they were shot with $40 cell phones and tin cans on strings are about to become much more rare.  YouTube announced this afternoon that it’s going to let 500 YouTube partners conduct shopping sprees on its dime, only the actual total should be closer to $500,000.

A post on the YouTube Blog explained, "[W]e’re giving a $1,000 credit at B&H Photo to 500 partners around the world, who primarily create and distribute their content online, to purchase new video production equipment.  This group includes well-known YouTube stars like ShayCarl, MysteryGuitarMan and FreddieW . . . and also successful musicians like Kina Grannis and promising new talents like EmilyNoel83, who was the inaugural winner of our ‘On The Rise’ program last month."

Congrats to the content creators who will profit from this move.  Obviously, it’s a compliment regarding your talent, and we’re sure spending $1,000 will be fun, besides.

At least a couple other entities/groups should benefit, too.  B&H Photo is going to see a considerable bump in sales, of course.  Then YouTube users are bound to enjoy the final results.

YouTube itself might even come out ahead, at least in the long term.  If higher-quality videos attract more viewers and advertisers, the extra revenue could at some point outweigh the expense of the shopping spree.

Here’s an interesting fact if you find that hard to believe: the YouTube Blog post stated, "Collectively, these 500 partners generated billions of video views in 2010 . . ."