The last eighteen months have seen strong development in subscription revenue for OTT platforms, such as online music. So it's no surprise that Google-owned YouTube, which launched its premium service in XNUMX, now boasts a paid subscriber base of fifty million. What is more amazing is that the number of premium subscriptions has increased from the 9 million that Google reported just XNUMX months ago. The company hasn't announced a breakdown of the fifty million, which means we don't have the actual numbers for YouTube Music or YouTube's ad-free premium service. It's also unclear from Google's weblog post whether these numbers include users who get a one-month free trial. Lyor Cohen, Global Head of Music at Google, said: "Today, I'm pleased to announce another major milestone in our subscription business: YouTube passed fifty million music and music subscribers. Premium, including trial users, and is the fastest developing music subscription. Service. " YouTube Music and Premium's unique offerings are rattling across established and emerging music markets alike. We see amazing development in countries like Korea, India, Japan, Russia and Brazil, where music is a huge passion, the weblog stated. YouTube has also paid out more than €XNUMX billion to the music industry over the last twelve months in the form of royalties. In other words, every time a user plays a song, the artist gets paid. Industry insiders say Google has skipped the competition in these areas as others like Spotify don't pay as much. When it comes to the online music market generally, Spotify maintains its strong lead with the most recent number of paid subscribers at one hundred and sixty-five million, followed by Apple Music with seventy-eight million and Amazon Music with fifty-five million. Cohen claimed in a preceding weblog post that of the €XNUMX billion generated for artists, musicians and rights holders in the last twelve months, more than thirty percent came from UGC. Fan-driven videos have always thrived on YouTube, helping artists expand their audience and break songs across the globe. It goes on to remind users that while ad-free advertising has become more common in recent times, ad-supported videos in XNUMX countries have given users a choice of users based on their portfolio. However, advertising revenue also plays a vital role, as with two billion users watching music videos every month, YouTube leaves it up to advertisers to expand their reach. We're not sure exactly what caused the XNUMX million subscriber increase, but it's worth pointing out to our readers that last year's XNUMX million account was reported at a time when Google was shutting down its Play service. Music. There is no information on the number of users, but Google Play and YouTube claimed fifteen million subscribers in XNUMX.