Vessel Group, Inc. (Vessel), the company founded by former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, now offers exclusive content from YouTube stars for a price. The service was launched Tuesday after a period of private beta testing.

The site, which according to reports provides a range of YouTube stars for a fee, has been recruiting YouTube stars since mid-to-late 2014, which as we reported back in December had Google worried that it would lose some of the biggest and brightest from YouTube.

For $2.99 a month, users get content from their favorite stars 72 hours before the same videos appear on YouTube for free.

According to The Verge, however, if users sign up in the next three days they’ll be able to obtain free access to the site for one year, which was confirmed by SiliconANGLE in testing.

If potential users want to simply browse what’s on offer, they’ll be deeply disappointed; in an epic fail of marketing, the site (at least how it is at the time of writing) insists that you have to sign up to even see what’s on offer.

If and when you do sign up to see what’s on offer, instead of being presented with a screen of YouTube stars, you are instead presented with a list of “categories to follow” … which is, given the pitch of the site is exclusive access to YouTube stars, bordering on the bizarre. Users are also required to select three categories, but the site doesn’t tell you that, versus simply failing to do anything until you select three categories.

The following screen then (finally) gives you the option to “follow your favorites.” Given that you have no idea who’s available/signed to the site at this point, looking at this screen gives the feeling of being underwhelming. Once again, users are required to select a minimum of three options to proceed.

Despite having gone through the rigmarole of the sign-up process, users are then presented with content in categories and from creators they hadn’t selected, including content (surprisingly) from BuzzFeed. 

The interface is presentable, but here’s where it disappoints more: the streaming speeds, in testing, were awful, particularly compared to YouTube. Videos stopped and started, and unless you allow them to buffer, they were unwatchable.

At $2.99 a month, you get what you pay for.

A marginal idea poorly executed

Even if most people can’t understand why PewDiePie has 13 million subscribers on YouTube, there is a reasonable argument behind popular YouTube creators being paid more, and there’s no doubt that YouTube as a platform has democratized the ability for talent to be discovered beyond the realms of big business, in the forms of old-school media companies.

However, at least at launch, Vessel just doesn’t work.

It doesn’t take a degree in marketing, let alone a Marketing 101 course in the first year of a degree, to know that you promote what you’re offering upfront, and yet Vessel does no such thing, and instead imposes a forced sign-up process, complete with a bizarre selection process, just to get to some of the content. And even if you get that far, the video stutters away.

The only possible way, as it currently stands, Vessel may work, is that those featured on it market the hell out of it. But even then it’s a leap of faith that fans will sign up to a poorly thought-out website with bad video and pay for the privilege.

Vessel has raised a staggering (for what’s on offer) $75 million prior to launch, and is backed by Bezos Expeditions, Greylock Partners and Benchmark Capital.