Google announced today that YouTube has increased its worldwide music and premium subscribers by 30 million in one year from 50 million subscribers last year to 80 million subscribers today.
Within one year, YouTube was able to increase the number of music and premium subscribers by 60 percent.
The number of trial subscriptions is not stated
Although YouTube states that trial subscriptions are included in these 80 million and thus also in the newly acquired subscriptions, it does not specify the ratio of free trial subscriptions to actual paying music and premium subscribers. Buyers of both the new Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro (test) and the Pixel Watch (test) receive the services, for example, three months free of charge when purchasing the devices – with the Pixel 7 (Pro) YouTube Premium, with the Pixel Watch, however, 3 Months of YouTube Music Premium.
$6 billion for the music industry
In mid-September, YouTube announced that it had paid out over $6 billion to the music industry worldwide in the 12 months from July 2021 to June 2022, with around 30 percent of that amount coming from user-generated content such as shorts, which send more than 30 billion views. YouTube wants to become the most important source of income for the music industry in the future. In the same period last year, payments to the music industry totaled around four billion US dollars.
Started in Germany in mid-2018
YouTube Music and YouTube Premium were launched in Germany in mid-2018. YouTube Premium makes YouTube ad-free and allows content to be downloaded and played in the background. With YouTube Music, on the other hand, more than 100 million pieces can be accessed in the music library of the streaming service.
In comparison, the market leader Spotify currently has 195 million subscribers with a total of 456 million active monthly users.
User numbers from Spotify in Q3 2022 (Image: Spotify)