YouTube Music’s nonetheless boomin’ in ’26: YouTube World Head of Music Lyor Cohen (Picture: Noa Griffel)
Earlier this week, Apple Music dropped the surprising trade bombshell by quietly surpassing Spotify’s subscriber depend within the US. However Spotify may need to keep watch over one other fast-surging DSP: YouTube Music.
‘YouTube’ and ‘artist-friendly’ are not often utilized in the identical sentence. However what as soon as appeared like a premium afterthought at YouTube is now materializing right into a high-growth, paid subscriber juggernaut that might finally spin off extra substantive artist royalties.
In early 2025, DMN Professional first revealed a surprising surge in YouTube Music and packaged YouTube Premium subscribers, with the out-of-left-field subscriber spike showing linked to a number of good methods and product enhancements on the video big. By the point the ball dropped on 2026, YouTube Music was simply the fastest-growing music subscription service in America, with almost 40% year-over-year subscriber beneficial properties.
Now, that ‘spike’ seems like a sustained progress spurt, with preliminary knowledge revealing a extra subdued double-digit subscriber achieve persevering with in 2026.
The current beneficial properties are spectacular, however nonetheless put YouTube properly behind DSP subscriber hogs like Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music. However these mega-giants are presently posting single-digit year-over-year beneficial properties, at finest, with slowdowns impacting higher-ARPU markets just like the US.
However simply what number of subscribers is YouTube Music tacking onto its totals, precisely?
DMN Professional remains to be parsing via a mountain of subscriber knowledge shared by main labels, publishers, distributors, and royalty accounting number-crunchers — to call a number of sources. Keep tuned for our full knowledge breakdown, however we are able to safely assess that YouTube Music was, properly, killin’ it in Q1 2026, because of heavy and continued progress in its packaged YouTube Premium accounts, which bundle a bunch of YouTube goodies with YouTube Music (however importantly, not YouTube TV).
All of a sudden, YouTube Music is getting its subscriber mojo on — and that’s a constructive growth for an trade that has lengthy struggled with YouTube’s low-paying, ad-supported, artist-unfriendly freebie platform.
For now, Alphabet isn’t disclosing any subscriber knowledge at YouTube Premium or YouTube Music. However they’re pointing to aggressive, across-the-board subscriber beneficial properties.
“Past promoting, YouTube’s subscription enterprise, which thrives throughout lounge screens, is rising sooner than adverts, significantly pushed by YouTube Music and Premium,” Alphabet Chief Enterprise Officer Philipp Schindler relayed throughout Alphabet’s Q2 earnings name this week.
Effectively, if Schindler received’t spill the beans on YouTube Music’s newest subscriber particulars, we’ll — together with the crucial breakdowns between packaged YouTube Premium and Music-only plans. General, Premium+Music packages proceed to drive this success story, with takers decreasing their streaming music payments whereas having fun with a cleaner YouTube expertise.
That sort of bundling can be boosting music subscriptions at Apple, which raises a crucial query in regards to the now-mature streaming music area.
Are the tech giants lastly determining how one can rope extra music subscribers into lower-cost, attractive packages?
That’s a scary query for a flattening Spotify, which is specializing in bundles that embody audiobooks and premium podcasts like Joe Rogan. These perks sound nice for the suitable subscriber, besides when in comparison with critical, lower-priced packages that embody goodies like premium TV (i.e., Apple TV), digital storage (iCloud), Prime perks, or, within the case of YouTube, ad-free and higher YouTube experiences.
Maybe significantly under-leveraging on this regard is Amazon Music, which continues to shed paying subscribers regardless of probably highly effective bundling choices throughout its highly effective Prime and streaming TV community. However possibly Amazon Music, like YouTube Music simply two years in the past, is a sleeping big that merely wants to determine the well priced Prime+Music+video mega-bundle to start out luring in additional subs.
On that be aware, possibly YouTube has much more bundling tips up its sleeve?
Throughout Alphabet’s earnings name, the aforementioned Schindler lumped the venerable YouTube TV alongside YouTube Premium and Music. However one supply to Digital Music Information urged us to not maintain our breath for a mega-bundle of all three.
For starters, YouTube TV’s carriage offers are understood to lead to a significantly low-margin enterprise, with a proportion of subscriber income a part of the negotiated charges to networks. Lumping that into Premium+Music would create the killer bundle, but in addition siphon off revenues from higher-margin subscriber accounts.
Past that, YouTube TV is a play for the coveted lounge leisure system, whereas on-demand music streaming and YouTube-watching are typically laptop computer and phone-based actions. Definitely there’s overlap, however maybe YouTube’s knowledge suggests these are totally different consumer camps.
Theorizing apart, YouTube’s present bundle is certainly working, and significantly boosting paid music subscriptions. However what sort of numbers and beneficial properties are we talkin’ right here? Keep tuned for the meaty particulars in our subsequent DMN Professional Weekly Report.
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