The channel membership thing is YouTube's Patreon clone. But I don't know how far they've rolled it out yet, and it doesn't seem as flexible or popular with creators as Patreon. And the fact that it is tied to Youtube, and thus the same channel shutdown etc mechanisms, will be a big minus for many.
Case in point, after writing this I looked into it a bit more and it does a bunch of things I thought it didn't. Waaay to hidden and unattractive UI IMHO.
