This is up from the 50 million that YouTube announced in September of last year. So that’s quite a bit of growth for YouTube. And while we don’t know for sure, but adding more pre-roll, mid-roll and longer ads likely accounted for this growth. As far as YouTube Music is concerned, this does put them solidly in third place, behind Spotify and Apple Music. Which is pretty impressive, but keep in mind that some services will include free trials in these numbers, so the numbers can be a bit skewed here.
This shows people are willing to pay for an ad-free experience
This is just the latest in signs that show that users are willing to pay for a service, to get an ad-free experience. 80 million is no small number, and all of those people are getting YouTube without those pesky ads. We’ve also seen this with other streaming services like discovery+, Paramount+ and others. Where people are willing to spend a few more bucks each month for the privilege of being able to experience content without ads. Of course, YouTube Premium does offer more than ad-free YouTube. However that is the biggest feature. It also brings along with it downloading for offline playback, and background playback. YouTube Music is also included here. So really for a couple bucks more than Spotify, you get ad-free YouTube. Which is definitely worth paying for. The 80 million number is staggering, but YouTube has over 2.6 billion monthly active users. So it’s still a small drop in the bucket for YouTube’s users.
