YouTube and YouTube Music Have Over 100 Million Paying Subscribers

YouTube announced today that it added 20 million YouTube and YouTube Premium subscribers in the past year, bringing the total number of paying subscribers to over 100 million.

“In 2015, many doubted a subscription model could thrive on YouTube,” YouTube global head Lyor Cohen writes in the announcement post. “They said the market was crowded and our platform was too different. Today – 100 million subscribers later – our distinctiveness is precisely what drives our success and why I still see so much room for growth. This 20-million-member growth in just over a year underscores the strength of our twin engine of advertising and subscription revenue.”

Interestingly, Cohen also credits the linking of the YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium subscriptions—a key complaint for some users—as core to this success, as it’s a bundled offering its rivals can’t duplicate. “YouTube AND YouTube Music fans can enjoy ad-free access to both apps, and play videos in the background or download them,” he notes.

He also credits the ongoing improvements to YouTube Music, which he says is now “unrecognizable” from the app when it first launched. And he lists some coming new features, many of which, perhaps unsurprisingly, leverage Google’s AI prowess. The service will soon offer generative AI-based playlist cover art and a radio builder, and YouTube is adding a new conversational tool so customers can ask questions about the videos they watch.