Spotify and Apple Music are among the most popular music streaming services, with the latter's lossless support being another cherry on the top. In comparison, YouTube Music still feels like a work in progress, though Google has made great strides in recent years. The company's efforts seem to be paying off, as YouTube crossed over 80 million Music and Premium subscribers in September 2022. That's a 30 million jump on top of the 50 million subscribers the service had in 2021.

In an announcement on the YouTube blog, Google's Global Head of Music for YouTube, Lyor Cohen, says the 80 million+ subscriber base includes both YouTube Music and YouTube Premium users. The latter lets you enjoy YouTube and YouTube Music ad-free across devices with the ability to download content for offline playback. You also get background playback and Picture-in-Picture (PiP) support. A YouTube Music Premium subscription gets you similar benefits but only for music playback.

So, how did YouTube manage a 30 million increase in its subscriber base in a year? Cohen says new features like afterparties and putting the fans first have helped in rapid growth. YouTube's partnership with carriers in Japan, Europe, and Korea further helped push the service to users there.

Google has revealed the subscriber numbers until September 2022, though. This is right before the company announced a massive price hike for YouTube Premium's Family plan in October in the US, Canada, the UK, and selected other markets. In the US, the Family plan became expensive by $5 per month. Grandfathered YouTube Red users are also affected by this change, though the new price will come into effect in April 2023 for them. The higher subscription price is bound to impact YouTube's paid subscriber base, at least in the short term.

While YouTube's figure of 80 million paid subscribers sounds impressive, it pales compared to Spotify and Apple Music. The former has 433 million users, with 188 million paying for it. Apple Music is estimated to have around 85-90 million paid users. As for Netflix, its subscriber base is almost 3x of YouTube Premium, with 223 million users.