YouTube Music launched back in 2018, and it replaced Google Play Music, and the latest report suggests that the service now has 50 million paid subscribers. According to the report from Bloomberg, the 50 million figure also includes the YouTube Premium subscribers and "Customers still on a trial basis." Sadly, YouTube has not revealed how much revenue it is making from paid subscriptions.
Data coming from Midia Research suggests that YouTube Music was the fastest-growing music service globally in the first quarter of 2021. However, Google's paid music streaming service still has a long way to come before finally reaching competitors such as Apple Music and Spotify. Spotify held a 32% market share of the 487 million music subscribers across the globe back from January to March. Apple's market share was 16%, while Amazon Music captured a 13% global music streaming market share.
YouTube Music is Slowly But Surely Closing the Gap it Shares with the Competition.
YouTube Music managed to be successful in adding 20 million new subscribers in less than a year. In October 2020, Google revealed that it had around 30 million YouTube Premium and YouTube Music subscribers.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Lyor Cohen, YouTube's global head of music, said the following.
The twin engine growth story is real. There are people who are prepared to pay with their eyeballs and those willing to subscribe. They are both super important.
When YouTube Music was first launched, it failed to gain popularity among users. However, over the past couple of years, YouTube has spent a good amount of money marketing the service and building the "infrastructure to attract new customers and maintain them." The service has also gained success in several emerging markets thanks to YouTube being the most popular video streaming service in those countries.
YouTube's chief business officer Rober Kyncl believes that the service's success in emerging markets played an important role in pushing YouTube Music to 50 million subscribers.
I don't think we expected we'd get to 50 million this fast. It's gone better than what we thought we would do.
