YouTube Premium and Music crossing 100 million subscribers

YouTube is reaching an big milestone by having 100 million subscribers to YouTube Music and Premium, following Google’s “One” subscription plan, which boasted 100 million users. Three days ago’s earnings call excluded information about YouTube’s membership figures.

Identifying the exact factor fueling YouTube’s subscriptions is difficult. It’s easy to picture people sticking to one or the other of the two options available to them with Premium: ad-free YouTube music and videos. With Google punishing ad-block users by preventing video playback and displaying interstitial pop-ups, ad-free videos have been promoted most aggressively lately.

The pop-ups then display a large “try YouTube Premium” button after alerting visitors to the fact that ad blockers are against YouTube’s terms of service. While 2K, 4K, and 8K options have always been free, Premium also adds a unique “enhanced bitrate” 1080p preset.

Regarding music, not much has changed. While YouTube Music is free to use with advertisements and a more constrained feature set, you can avoid ads when you subscribe and enjoy background music on phones, ad-free playback, and YouTube Music streaming on Google’s range of speakers. Quotes from numerous notable CEOs in the music industry honoring the service are featured on YouTube’s blog post.

In its statement, Google merges two distinct subscription services. Google raised pricing last year for both the music-only “YouTube Music Premium” subscription, which costs $10.99 per month, and the $13.99 per month YouTube Premium subscription, which grants you ad-free access to YouTube and YouTube Music.

The company doesn’t have a plan for Spotify users who don’t want Google’s music service. Google offered a music-free “YouTube Premium Lite” membership option only in Europe from 2021 to 2023, however the service ended a few months ago.