The free version contains ads, cannot download the audio for offline playback, and cannot play in the background the paid version of YouTube Music Premium ($9.99/month) allows users to listen, download ad-free music and play it in the background. YouTube Music adopts a similar freemium model to Spotify.

However, in October 2019, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai revealed on the third-quarter earnings call that YouTube Music had more than 30 million subscribers, achieving a high-speed growth of 10 million paid subscribers in nine months.įor a long time, YouTube Music and Google Play Music operated in parallel until December 2020, when YouTube Music replaced Google Play Music as Google's main music streamer. Data from the fourth quarter of 2019 showed that YouTube Music only had 20 million paid subscribers four years after its launch.

Compared with peers such as Spotify (2008), Apple Music (2015), and Amazon Music (2016), the YouTube Music paid service, which was officially launched in October 2015, has been in a tepid state.

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