YouTube Music and YouTube Premium have surpassed 150 million subscribers globally, including users on free trials. The milestone was disclosed by Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai on the company's third-quarter 2026 earnings call on October 28.
The figure is up by more than 25 million from the 125 million announced in March 2025 — an average of around 1.3 million net additions per month, according to Music Business Worldwide's calculation. Before that, YouTube had reached 100 million subscribers in February 2024. Alphabet does not break out how many subscribers are for YouTube Music alone versus YouTube Premium.
Premium includes ad-free playback, background play, offline downloads and full access to YouTube Music. In the results, Alphabet's subscriptions, platforms and devices revenue grew 11% year on year to $14.29 billion, driven, according to CFO Anat Ashkenazi, by strong growth in YouTube subscriptions, particularly Music and Premium, and strong demand for Google One AI plans.
YouTube advertising also grew in the quarter, up 9.2% year on year to $11.21 billion, and living-room TV viewing accounted for more than one-third of that advertising revenue, according to chief business officer Philipp Schindler. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan marked the milestone in a social media post, saying the company keeps expanding choice and value for viewers, creators and partners.
What the number does not say matters too: it includes free trials and does not separate Music from Premium, so it is not a count of paying subscribers to a single product. Even so, the jump since March 2025 shows growth continued even after the April price rises in the United States, when the individual Premium plan went from $13.99 to $15.99 a month and the Music plan from $10.99 to $11.99.
Image credit: Zulfugar Karimov, via Digital Music News.
Sources: Google — Q3 2026 earnings call: Remarks from our CEO; Music Business Worldwide — YouTube Music and Premium surpass 150 million subscribers globally.
Transparency: this article was prepared with the assistance of artificial intelligence, based on public reporting and internet sources, cross-checked against public social media posts. Consult the original sources to confirm details and dates.
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