Google has announced that YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium now have more than a hundred million subscribers (including subscribers using the two paid services on a trial basis). According to the company, it gained over 20 million subscribers in just over a year. In 2021, the two platforms had 50 million subscribers combined, which means that Google has managed to double that figure in just over two years.
In the US, a subscription to YouTube Music Premium costs USD 10.99 per month for an individual. For that price, it gives you the ability to listen to songs without advertisements, download tracks to listen to them when you are offline, listen to music in the background, and switch between listening to the audio of a song to watching the video of that song with a single flip of a switch among other benefits.
On the other hand, a subscription to YouTube Premium costs USD 13.99 per month for an individual. It gives you the ability to watch videos without advertisements, download videos to watch them when you are offline, and play a video in the background, even when the device is locked, among other benefits. A subscription to YouTube Premium includes a subscription to YouTube Music Premium as well.
Google hasn’t revealed separate subscriber counts for YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium. However, no matter how you split the ratio, the user base of YouTube Music Premium is nowhere as large as that of Spotify Premium, which had around 220 million subscribers in September 2023. Apple has stopped revealing the user base of Apple Music. So, it is hard to tell if it is more or less popular than Spotify and YouTube Music. In 2019, the tech giant said that Apple Music had 60 million subscribers.
