More than 80 million subscribers to the platform’s paid offers

YouTube now has more than 80 million subscribers to its paid services worldwide. This represents a gain of 30 million subscribers in one year for the platform which intends to become one of the main players in the music industry. “You’ve heard me say it before, and I’ll say it again: YouTube’s twin growth engines – subscriptions and advertising – are serious business,” said Lyor Cohen, global head of music. on YouTube, in a blog post published Wednesday.

The figure of 80 million subscribers includes users on a free trial, he said. A month earlier, the American platform had announced that it had contributed six billion dollars to the music industry over the past twelve months. Last year, she announced her ambition to “become the first source of income for the music industry”.

Far behind Spotify

Google’s free video platform promotes YouTube Music and YouTube Premium, two paid offers that cost respectively $9.99 and $11.99 per month (just like in France, but in euros) to enjoy videos without ads, offline and in the background (i.e. with other open applications). Since the launch of these offers, “we have established partnerships with companies such as Samsung, such as SoftBank (Japan), Vodafone (Europe), LG Uplus (Korea) and Google services such as Google One”, developed Lyor Cohen underlining their “essential role” in reaching the milestone of 80 million subscribers.

However, the platform remains far behind Spotify, number one in music streaming, which has 195 million paying subscribers. It will also have to reckon with competition from Amazon, which announced at the beginning of the month that it had given its 200 million subscribers to the paid “Prime” formula free and ad-free access to a catalog of 100 million songs and flagship podcasts. . Apple has not released the number of Apple Music subscribers since June 2019, when it said it crossed the threshold of 60 million paying users.