YouTube Music and Premium Pass 150 Million Subscribers
YouTube Music and YouTube Premium now have 150 million subscribers worldwide, including people on free trials. Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google and Alphabet, disclosed the figure in Alphabet's third-quarter earnings release on 28 October 2026.
Alphabet's quarter ran from July to the end of September. The company reports subscriptions for the two services together, so it does not say how many people pay for YouTube Music alone and how many pay for YouTube Premium. Trial users are counted in the total, which means the 150 million figure includes people who have not yet paid anything.
The service has been growing in steps. Music Business Worldwide reported that the total stood at 100 million in February 2024 and 125 million in March 2025. In the first quarter of 2026, Pichai said the service had its largest quarterly increase in non-trial subscribers since YouTube Premium launched in June 2018. Alphabet did not give an updated subscriber figure in its second-quarter results, so the new total is the first since March 2025.
Premium is the paid tier. It removes adverts from videos, lets people play videos with the screen off, allows downloads for offline listening and viewing, and includes full access to YouTube Music. The free version of YouTube Music still carries adverts.
The money side is in the same release. Alphabet's Google subscriptions, platforms and devices revenue rose 11% to $14.29 billion (US dollars) in the quarter, up from $12.87 billion a year earlier. Advertising revenue on YouTube rose 9.2% to $11.21 billion, from $10.26 billion in the same quarter of 2025.
For most people, the change will be invisible. Their playlists, downloads and background listening stay where they are. What has changed is the count of people who have chosen to pay for, or try, the paid version, and Alphabet has now put a number on it.
