Is the race for subscribers over? A breakdown of US-based DSP market share, Q3 2025 (Supply: DMN Professional)
YouTube was one of many first main gamers in music streaming, because of a video platform that rapidly absorbed thousands and thousands of music movies, reside tracks, lyric movies, and sing-along covers. However given its immense first-mover benefit, why is YouTube Music struggling so badly behind Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music in terms of paying subscribers?
Should you take pleasure in riddles wrapped in conundrums, you’ve come to the correct article. As we speak’s perplexing head-scratcher considerations YouTube Music, a subscription service that is still a distant fourth behind Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music when it comes to whole subscribers within the all-important US market.
Certainly, ‘distant’ solely scratches the floor. In response to the newest streaming music information from DMN Professional, Spotify’s subscriber base is 5 occasions bigger than YouTube Music’s. Even Apple Music, a relative latecomer to music streaming, enjoys a equally gaping lead.
Mixed, Spotify and Apple Music dwarf YouTube Music’s subscriber depend by roughly 10x.
However how is that potential given YouTube’s longstanding dominance within the media panorama?
A part of the reason being timing.
Amazingly, YouTube’s footprint in music dates again to the early 2000s, when customers first began importing grainy music movies and live performance footage. However the present, bona fide iteration of YouTube Music, a correct on-demand audio and video music platform that solidly battled Spotify, Apple Music, and different DSPs, didn’t emerge till 2018. That was after just a few half-baked makes an attempt and a second-fiddle place behind the now-defunct Google Play Music.
Against this, Spotify first bowed in 2008, arriving on American shores by 2011. Apple Music, which is now jockeying for the highest slot within the US, arrived in mid-2015. Amazon Music, which additionally stays far forward of YouTube Music in whole subscribers, has been in digital music for the reason that mid-2000s, however first debuted its Prime streaming music service in 2014.
These are multi-year head begins, and one clarification for YouTube’s lag within the paid subscriber race within the US and different markets.
Then once more, Apple Music — which additionally arrived years late to the race — is now threatening Spotify’s longtime subscriber lead in important, high-value markets just like the US.
A part of Apple’s come-up comes from group accounts, significantly Household accounts. In response to DMN Professional information sourced from a spread of IP house owners, main publishers, IP directors, and distributors, Apple Music now holds a number one place within the important Household plan market phase.
Actually, Apple Music has twice as many Household plan subscribers as YouTube Music’s whole US subscriber base, based on our information.
However Apple Music couldn’t be extra completely different than YouTube. For starters, Apple Music has all the time been a paid-only platform, whereas YouTube’s platform is dominated by free, ad-supported entry. YouTube’s free-access mannequin, coupled with large subsidization from Google, enabled it to change into one of the viral and expansive platforms on the planet.
One facet impact of that progress technique, nevertheless, is that changing customers into paid relationships turns into difficult. That’s undoubtedly been a dilemma for YouTube Music, the place mainline YouTube customers can rapidly and simply entry high-quality movies from nearly any artist with out opening their wallets.
In the meantime, YouTube Music is definitely seeing substantial subscriber progress.
As of Q3, YouTube Music has grown greater than 13% year-over-year within the US alone, whereas Spotify and Apple Music have notched solely single-digit year-over-year beneficial properties. Amazon Music has shed subscribers over the previous yr, a part of a broader subscriber plateau within the now-mature American market.
Again in Could of 2025, YouTube Music chief Lyor Cohen pointed to a complete of 125 million subscribers throughout its YouTube Music and Premium properties. However Cohen stopped in need of breaking down music-specific subs, nor did he supply any regional subscriber breakdowns.
Regardless, that topline determine — of which YouTube Music is a fraction — is lower than half of Spotify’s world subscriber whole of 276 million reported on the finish of the primary half of 2025.
However paid or ad-supported, YouTube is tossing a whole lot of coin into the music trade pot.
Pound-for-pound, paying subscribers contribute much more income than ad-supported customers. However YouTube has a ton of ad-supported customers — i.e., billions of them.
That interprets into important income for the music enterprise. In response to information shared by Cohen this week, YouTube has contributed greater than $8 billion in revenues to the broader music trade, together with labels, publishers, PROs, manufacturing homes, and indie artists.
Particularly, the income whole occurred between July 2024 and June 2025, although particulars on particular income sources (subscriber, ad-supported, or different) have been scant.
“As we speak’s $8 billion payout is a testomony to the truth that the dual engine of adverts and subscriptions is firing on all cylinders,” Cohen shared. “This quantity just isn’t an endpoint; it represents significant, sustained progress in our journey to construct a long-term dwelling for each artist, songwriter, and writer on the worldwide stage.”
