Despite music companies Sony Music, Warner Music and Universal Music doing exceptionally well for themselves this year, YouTube has done ever better. Beating all other global record businesses and taking centre stage. New figures show just how well YouTube ads are performing.
YouTube ads revenue
During the past 12 months, Warner Music has grown by $10bn. Meanwhile, Sony Music has released information that shows they have had a 33% rise per year in streaming revenue. Finally, Universal Music are looking to hit a $2 billion growth. While this is all is huge, YouTube have gone one better. Their ad revenue cannot be beaten it seems. Record businesses don’t seem to stand a chance against the streaming giant.
Under the Alphabet umbrella, along with the likes of Google, YouTube have been working hard. It appears they have generated $7.205 billion in revenue from advertising alone. Imagine that, a huge figure built from just adverts. That’s an increase of 43% from the previous year.
Not only have YouTube secured that high a figure from their adverts, but they’ve also increased this profit through subscriptions. After YouTube has recently announced they’ve passed 50 million global subscribers to YouTube Music and YouTube Premium combined (exact figures of each feature haven’t been disclosed), it’s no surprise their revenue is soaring.
Within the first 9 months of 2021, YouTube made $20.21 billion from advertising, which is more than they made during the whole of 2020 from adverts. In 2020 the global record industry made $21.6 billion in revenue. Compare that to what YouTube made in the first 9 months of 2021 and the figures are almost the same.
Due to all of these figures that have been announced, Music Business Worldwide have announced they predict YouTube adverts will bring in between $29 and $32 billion throughout the whole of 2021.
Let’s hope with this substantial growth that we see better pay for all artists and content creators. After all, the money YouTube are receiving from adverts alone is enough to pay at a fairer rate. That’s before involving subscription revenue. It’s no secret that YouTube are often regarded as one of the worst paying streaming services. Hopefully as 2022 draws closer, we’ll see some movement in this. It’s no secret that streaming platforms have been the backbone during the global pandemic, both for online audiences and also creators themselves.
