YouTube’s ‘twin engine of ads and subscriptions is firing on all cylinders,’ says Lyor Cohen, as platform makes $8bn+ payout to the music industry over the past year
YouTube reports that it paid more than $8 billion to the music industry during the 12 months from July 2024 to June 2025.
The figure was shared by Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s Global Head of Music, at the Billboard Latin Music Week conference in Miami on Wednesday (October 22).
The payout covers revenue from both advertising and subscriptions on the Google-owned platform.
Cohen attributed the payout to what YouTube calls its “twin-engine model,” which generates revenue through ads shown alongside free content and paid subscriptions that remove ads.
In a comment shared with MBW, Cohen said: “$8 billion payout is a testament to the fact that the twin engine of ads and subscriptions is firing on all cylinders.”
He added: “This number is not an endpoint; it represents meaningful, sustained progress in our journey to build a long-term home for every artist, songwriter, and publisher on the global stage.”
The news marks a significant milestone for the platform, and means that its annual music industry payout figure has grown by $2 billionsince the last time it publicly shared a payout stat, which was in 2022.
At that time, YouTube announced that it had paid music rightsholders over USD $6 billion in the 12 months between July 2021 and the end of June 2022.
That June 2022 figure marked a $2 billion increase from the $4 billion contribution to music rightsholders that YouTube said it paid out in the prior-year period (the 12 months to end of June 2021).
“This number is not an endpoint; it represents meaningful, sustained progress in our journey to build a long-term home for every artist, songwriter, and publisher on the global stage.”
Lyor Cohen
Speaking with MBW in March of this year (2025), YouTube’s Lyor Cohen was bullish about YouTube’s goal of becoming the number one revenue contributor to the music industry globally.
That title is currently held by another player in the streaming space, Spotify, which paid out “a record” $10 billion to the music industry in 2024, the company said in January.
Cohen told us in March that YouTube is “not going to stop” until it claims the No.1 spot. “We have a long vision,” he said. “We’re committed to building products that the fans really care for and where fans are, that’s where you’ll find the music industry and the artists. We are not going to stop until we become the number one revenue source, not just the best partner.”
Spotify delivered USD $9 billion to music rightsholders in the prior year (2023), meaning it paid out a full $1 billion more in 2024 than it did in 2023.
Spotify didn’t publicly disclose a specific 2022 calendar year payout figure. In March 2023, it announced that cumulatively, “as of 2022, its all-time payouts to the music industry are approaching $40 billion”.
YouTube now has more than 125 million subscribers to YouTube Music and YouTube Premium worldwide, including those on trial periods.
YouTube also noted that 2 billion logged-in users watch music videos on the platform each month (a stat it first shared in 2020), though it didn’t specify whether that figure represents unique viewers or total viewing sessions.
YouTube operates in more than 100 countries and supports 80 languages.
Citing Nielsen data, Billboard noted that YouTube has topped the ranking of share of Americans’ TV viewing, with a 13.1% share in August, followed by Disney at 9.7% and Netflix at 8.7%.
To attract more users and subscribers amid the intense competition in the streaming space, YouTube continues to roll out more features and upgrades. Last month, the platform introduced a set of new artificial intelligence features for video production during the Made On YouTube event, where YouTube also revealed that it has paid out $100 billion to creators, artists, and media companies over the past four years.
The platform also rolled out a Speech to Song tool that converts dialogue from existing videos into musical soundtracks using Google DeepMind’s Lyria 2 music model.
YouTube’s ad revenue for Q2 2025 was $9.8 billion, representing a 13% YoY increase.
