YouTube has surpassed 80 million Music and Premium subscribers globally, including folks currently signed-up to free trials.
This marks a year-over-year increase of 30 million people—”and a monumental moment for music on YouTube, our subscribers, and artists,” Lyor Cohen, the company’s global head of Music, wrote in a blog announcement.
Cohen credits YouTube’s “twin engine of revenue”—subscriptions and ads—as its main driver of success, noting that between July 2021 and June 2022, the firm contributed $6 billion in revenue to the music industry, 30% of which came from user-generated content.
“And now we’ve reached this 80+ million milestone by building a subscription service with the music industry that puts fans first,” Cohen said. “Hopefully these milestones demonstrate our commitment to becoming the [No. 1] contributor of revenue to the music industry.”
A $9.99-per-month YouTube Music Premium subscription lets users eliminate ads, save tracks for offline listening on mobile devices, and access auto-downloaded playlists based on your listening preferences. YouTube Premium, meanwhile, costs $11.99 per month to remove the site’s many ads, access YouTube Music and Originals, and download video for offline viewing on mobile devices.
As TechCrunch points out, YouTube’s 80-million milestone still puts its squarely behind competitors like Spotify and Apple Music, each of which count paid subscribers in the triple digits. Even China-only music service Tencent has about 3 million more members than YouTube Premium. It’s unclear how, or if, the Google-owned firm’s recent price increases will affect those numbers.
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