IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS, YOUTUBE SAYS IT PAID THE MUSIC INDUSTRY OVER $4 BILLION

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek revealed earlier this year at his Stream On the event that his firm will pay out more than $5 billion to the music industry in 2020.

YouTube appears to be intent on bringing down its Swedish competition, according to fresh information released by the Alphabet-owned site today (June 2).

YouTube’s Global Head of Music, Lyor Cohen, stated in a recent email to the music business that the company paid over $4 billion to artists, composers, and rights-holders in the previous 12 months, with money coming from both YouTube adverts and YouTube Music / YouTube Premium subscriptions.

Cohen has his sights set on Spotify’s top spot: The Alphabet-owned platform’s objective is now “to become the leading revenue generator for the music industry,” according to the YouTube executive.

Furthermore, according to Cohen, YouTube added more paid ‘members’ in Q1 21 than any other quarter since its start.

Today’s disclosure comes after YouTube previously announced that it paid the music business over $3 billion in 2019 – almost 20% of its yearly ad income.

YouTube’s newest payment figures come only three months after we revealed that the network made $19.78 billion in advertising revenue in calendar 2020 (across all of its videos, including music).

This implies that over the last 12 months, YouTube has paid the music business around 20% of its ad income from the previous year throughout its platform.

Cohen claims that both paid music material and user-generated content (UGC) on YouTube are “growing and producing tremendous value” for the music business elsewhere in his letter.

According to Cohen, User Generated Content accounted for almost 30% (or $1.2 billion) of the $4 billion+ YouTube paid to the music business in the previous year.

“Fan-powered videos have always flourished on YouTube, helping artists grow their audiences and break songs around the world,” writes Coen.

“We’re thrilled it’s now also become a meaningful and incremental source of revenue alongside premium music content.”

YouTube is also “continuing to innovate with direct-to-fan products” such as ticketing, merch, subscriptions, paid digital goods, and paid-for virtual events, according to Cohen.

BLACKPINK’s paid virtual concert, THE SHOW, was especially popular, according to him, with roughly “280,000 channel subscriptions across 81 countries” sold.

The virtual event, which took place on January 31, was only available to subscribers of the band’s official YouTube channel and had two levels of access.

The Livestream, rebroadcast, and personalized emojis were all $29.99 for standard access, while the Livestream, rebroadcast custom emojis, and behind-the-scenes footage were all $39.99 for ‘Plus’ access.

The organization would have made at least $8.4 million from the one-time virtual event if all 280,000 “memberships” were acquired at the usual fee.

According to Cohen, the event brought in 2.7 million additional subscribers to the group’s official artist channel.

The Chairman of Beggars Group, Martin Mills, loves what he sees.

He 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.”