YouTube continues to underline its potential for creators, with the platform at the moment saying that it paid out $8 billion to the music trade between July 2024 and June 2025.
That quantity is cut up between creators, labels, publishers, and so forth., so it’s not all going direct to musicians within the app. However a good portion is being handed on to artists a technique or one other, serving to to help the expansion of the broader music trade.
As defined by YouTube:
“At this time’s $8 billion payout is a testomony to the truth that the dual engine of adverts and subscriptions is firing on all cylinders. This quantity is just not an endpoint; it represents significant, sustained progress in our journey to construct a long-term house for each artist, songwriter, and writer on the worldwide stage.”
YouTube reported paying $6 billion to the music trade in 2022, so it’s including one other $1 billion in funds per yr, based mostly on this newest mark. For comparability, Spotify introduced earlier this yr that it paid out $10 billion in whole to the music trade in 2024, so YouTube is getting near equaling its contribution.
YouTube says that it’s seen vital progress in its YouTube Music and Premium subscription packages (now as much as 125 million cumulative subscribers), serving to to help its payouts, whereas it additionally continues to develop its advert income base, enabling income share with all creators.
In whole, YouTube says that it’s paid out greater than $100 billion to creators over the previous 4 years, with its Companion Program enabling extra individuals to discover their passions, and construct a monetizable viewers within the app.
Certainly, it stays essentially the most profitable pathway, on common, for creators, with different platforms nonetheless working to evolve their income share fashions. Some creators, after all, will see extra success in different apps, however YouTube’s YPP program offers, arguably, the best strategy, particularly when partnered with the platform’s large viewers attain.
And music has at all times performed a key position within the app. Most of the most considered YouTube clips of all time are music movies, and it’s now change into a key distribution channel for musicians searching for to attach with a broader viewers.
The newest information underlines this, and reinforces YouTube’s position in music discovery and engagement.
