YouTube Premium and Music services pass 100 million subscribers

[Shawn Knight]

In brief: YouTube is an advertising-based business as its core, but the Google-owned sharing platform is also finding success in the subscription space. According to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, the company now has a combined 100 million subscribers between YouTube Premium and YouTube Music.

YouTube Premium primarily provides ad-free access to YouTube videos, and is priced at $13.99 per month. YouTube Music is the company's music streaming service, and comes as part of YouTube Premium (or separately, if you choose).

As Forbes correctly highlights, only a fraction of YouTube's overall user base of 2.5 billion people are subscribed. Still, it is a start and puts the company in a position to eventually catch up to streaming frontrunners like Spotify and Amazon.

In its latest earnings report, Spotify said it had 226 million Premium (paying) subscribers. Amazon does not share Prime subscriber numbers but is believed to have had around 176 million subs at the end of 2023.

Worth noting is the fact that YouTube included current one-month free trials in its 100 million subscriber tally, but wouldn't say how many of the total were trial subs.

During a recent earnings call, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Google's subscriptions – which also include services like YouTube TV (and the NFL Sunday Ticket add-on) and the Google One could storage service – collectively brought in $15 billion in revenue last year. Of course, Pichai didn't provide a breakdown of how much each service generated so it is hard to draw any solid conclusions. The executive did say, however, that Premium and Music have "real momentum."

In the fourth quarter, YouTube as a whole generated $9.2 billion. That is up 15.5 percent compared to the same period a year earlier.

YouTube's willingness to embrace the subscription model is not surprising, especially when the advertising model continues to come under fire. Should regulations come about that hamper targeted advertising practices, YouTube and others will have subscriptions to fall back on.

Image credit: Alexander Shatov, Christian Wiediger

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https://www.techspot.com/news/101730-youtube-premium-music-services-pass-100-million-subscribers.html

 

[Mr Majestyk]

100 million dolts.

 

[brucek]

How does this work from the perspective of the music companies?

When you pay your $10 - $15 per month to the likes of Spotify or Apple Music, they take a percentage for themselves than hand over all the rest to the various music rights owners.

I assume it's something similar here, except that now the music rights holders have to split that same monthly fee with everyone who makes YouTube videos? I can't imagine that conversation is going over well. I can't even really figure out how they made it happen at all?

 

[ScottSoapbox]

I have premium because I really hate commercials.

 

[erickmendes]

I have premium because I really hate commercials.

I believe that if it wasn't for commercials that subscription number would fall sharply...

 

[SiJiL]

I believe that if it wasn't for commercials that subscription number would fall sharply...

Agreed - I've been tempted by it, not because Premium offers me any additional features or functionality that would be worth the cost, but because they continue to make adverts more and more annoying.
Like on my TV, the YT app now regularly counts down to being able to skip, never shows you the skip button and instead starts playing another 20s ad with a new countdown to skip timer...
I also regularly get an add that I can skip after ~10s, do so, then get less than 30s of the video playing before another ad appears.

 

[passingposeidon]

I'm one of the dolts that signed up for it after they cracked down on adblockers. However, I really like now being able to watch youtube without adverts on all of my devices, and download videos and keep them playing on the lockscreen. Of course there are ways around adverts, and the smart people out there will know how to do that, but for the rest of us simpletons, I don't regret signing up.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

I'm one of the dolts that signed up for it after they cracked down on adblockers. However, I really like now being able to watch youtube without adverts on all of my devices, and download videos and keep them playing on the lockscreen. Of course there are ways around adverts, and the smart people out there will know how to do that, but for the rest of us simpletons, I don't regret signing up.

Smart or simpleton, there is also the time savings factor.

I have things I’d rather do with my life than play ad blocker chess. (or watch ads)

 

[Nobina]

It's 2024 and people still don't know about adblockers. Sometimes, I can't believe how little it takes to be ahead of the curve.

 

[ZedRM]

100 million dolts.

Irony! Look in a mirror.

I have premium because I really hate commercials.

Right there with you!

I believe that if it wasn't for commercials that subscription number would fall sharply...

Very likely.