Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
YouTube reached an important milestone on Thursday for its paid music and video tiers, crossing the 100 million subscriber benchmark globally. That figure includes trial subscriptions, so the real number of paid subscribers is fewer. YouTube’s subscription tiers have been a primary revenue generator for Google’s subscriptions services, which hit $15 billion in revenue (including YouTube TV and Google One) in 2023. It’s been roughly nine years since YouTube launched a paid, ad-free subscription service; it later decided to divide YouTube Red into YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium.
YouTube Music is the company’s streaming music service; the ad-free Premium tier costs $10.99 per month. YouTube Premium, at $13.99 per month, includes…