YouTube ‘paid music industry over $4bn’

In April, the video-sharing platform reported that it had generated $19.78bn from advertising in 2020, which equalled approximately 20% of its annual ad revenue. In 2019, YouTube said it had paid the music industry $3bn, which also accounted for a 20% portion of its ad revenue.

Cohen said that YouTube added the most paid subscribers in quarter one this year compared to other quarters since it was launched. He also suggested that both premium music and user-generated content (UGC) on YouTube are responsible for growing and creating significant value for the music industry. About $1.2bn (30%) of the $4bn that YouTube paid out was derived from UGC.

“Fan-powered videos have always flourished on YouTube, helping artists grow their audiences and break songs around the world,” Cohen wrote. “We’re thrilled it’s now also become a meaningful and incremental source of revenue alongside premium music content.”

He added: “We’re continuing to innovate with direct-to-fan products such as ticketing, merch, memberships, paid digital goods and virtual ticketed events. “BLACKPINK’s paid virtual concert – THE SHOW – sold nearly 280 000 channel memberships across 81 countries and helped the group earn 2.7 million new subscribers to their official artist channel.”

Commenting on the news, the chairperson of Beggars Group, Martin Mills, said: “YouTube’s growth for the Beggars business over the past couple of years has outpaced everyone as well as the market itself, and is now well on its way to deliver the potential of its huge audience to the music industry, as these revenue figures now show.”

Earlier this year, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said his company paid out more than $5bn to the music industry in 2020. However, YouTube has its eyes set on becoming the leading revenue generator for musicians, according to Cohen.

“As a visual-audio platform, our goal is to become the leading revenue generator for the music industry and to help artists around the world build a career making music. We are uniquely positioned to achieve this goal because YouTube monetises the end-to-end music experience globally,” he said.

During a UK parliamentary inquiry into the economics of music streaming in February, British Phonographic Industry boss Geoff Taylor blamed YouTube for low artist payouts and suggested that the video sharing platform should be treated as a music platform. “They’re a music service ­– 450 of the top 500 most viewed videos are music-related. It is not fair,” he said.

The latest news puts YouTube’s total lifetime payouts to artists at more than $16bn.