YouTube Premium Surpasses 100 Million Subscribers Milestone

Yesterday, Google announced that the popular video platform YouTube now has over 100 million paid subscribers across YouTube Music and YouTube Premium. Earlier this week, during its earnings call for Q4 2023, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company’s subscription business has crossed $15 billion annually.

On the other hand, the company’s chief business officer, Philipp Schindler, said that premium users are offering more value to their partners. “YouTube Music and Premium performed well. Premium users are delivering more value to our partners and YouTube than even ad-supported users do. On average, each additional Premium sign-up boosts earnings for creators, music and media partners, and YouTube itself,” he said.

YouTube has rolled out its Premium subscription to more than 100 countries. In December 2023, it expanded the Premium to 10 more countries, including Algeria, Cambodia, Ghana, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, and Senegal.

Google first launched YouTube Music back in 2015. At the time, the company offered a $9.99 per month Red subscription for ad-free viewing that also enabled users to access Play Music. The Red subscription was then rebranded to YouTube Premium back in 2018.

In 2023, YouTube cracked down on ad blockers by stating that these tools violated its terms of service. Moreover, in the last few years, it has also experimented with asking users to pay to watch videos in higher resolution or showing numerous unskippable ads.