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YouTube Music now has 50 million subscribers, faster than expected

YouTube Music has reached the milestone of 50 million paid subscribers. Google’s music service had a rough start, but is now growing faster than expected. Especially in emerging markets, Google knows how to gain subscribers.

YouTube Music

Google’s paid variant of YouTube, the YouTube Premium and YouTube Music services, together account for a total of 50 million subscribers worldwide. Bloomberg reports that. It makes YouTube Music the fastest growing paid music service in the world. In total, YouTube Music now has a market share of 8 percent, but Spotify remains the market leader by a large margin. In April, the service announced that it had 158 million paid users.

YouTube Music had a rocky start in its first year after its launch in 2018. After just under a year, Google had amassed 15 million subscribers, and that number doubled in the third quarter of 2020.

Eyeballs and money

An important key figure at Google is Lyor Cohen, as he is in charge of YouTube Music. Cohen has extensive experience in the music industry and helped Google build a strategy for free YouTube users and paid subscribers. “It’s a story of double-engine growth,” Cohen told Bloomberg. “There are those who are willing to pay with their eyeballs, and others who do so by subscribing.”

The new Premium Lite subscription that YouTube is testing

Success in growth markets

Google states that it is particularly successful in emerging markets, and that it manages to convince free users to remove the ads and also access it offline. According to Google, YouTube Music’s growth is beyond expectations.

Recently, Google has started testing a Lite subscription for YouTube Premium in the Netherlands, among other places. This only removes advertisements, but you are not entitled to a YouTube Music subscription. Have you already tried YouTube Premium and YouTube Music? Why does the service appeal to you or not? Let us know in the comments at the bottom of this article.

YouTube Music - stream music and watch videos

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