Entertainment

YouTube Music and Premium Top 150 Million Subscribers, Alphabet Says

Alphabet disclosed the milestone with its third-quarter results on 28 October. The count includes free trials and is 25 million above YouTube's last figure, from March 2025.

By The BB Report October 28, 2026

YouTube Music and Premium Top 150 Million Subscribers, Alphabet Says — YouTube chief executive Neal Mohan at the company's Brandcast event. Photo: Andrew Federman / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Key takeaways

Alphabet said YouTube Music and Premium have passed 150 million subscribers worldwide, including people on free trials.
The count is up from 125 million in March 2025, the last time YouTube gave a figure.
Google’s subscriptions, platforms and devices revenue grew 11% in the quarter, faster than the 9.2% growth in YouTube advertising.

YouTube’s paid music service has passed 150 million subscribers worldwide, Alphabet said on 28 October as it published results for the third quarter of 2026. Chief executive Sundar Pichai gave the figure in the company’s earnings release, saying "we surpassed 150 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers globally, including trials."

The milestone comes about 19 months after YouTube last put a number on the service, 125 million in March 2025, and in a quarter when Google’s subscription revenue grew faster than YouTube’s advertising. It also carries a caveat that matters to anyone comparing streaming services: the count includes people who are still on a free trial.

What Alphabet Reported

Alphabet’s results release, dated 28 October 2026, put consolidated revenue for the quarter at $127.6 billion, up 25% from $102.3 billion a year earlier. Net income was $26.5 billion, down from $35.0 billion in the third quarter of 2025.

YouTube advertising brought in $11.2 billion, compared with $10.3 billion a year earlier, a rise of 9.2%. Google’s subscriptions, platforms and devices line, which is where paid YouTube products are booked, rose from $12.9 billion to $14.3 billion, an increase of 11%.

The release says the Google Services segment earns subscription revenue from YouTube TV, YouTube Music and Premium, NFL Sunday Ticket and Google One. Because those are reported together, the revenue earned by YouTube Music and Premium alone cannot be read from the filing. Chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi said the line’s results were "driven by strong growth in YouTube subscriptions, particularly in YouTube Music and Premium, and strong demand for AI plans in Google One," according to Digital Music News.

On the advertising side, Google chief business officer Philipp Schindler told the call that "living room" viewing accounted for over one-third of YouTube’s advertising revenue, Digital Music News reported.

The Numbers at a Glance

YouTube Music and Premium: more than 150 million subscribers worldwide including trials (Q3 2026), against 125 million in March 2025. YouTube advertising revenue: $11.2 billion in Q3 2026, up 9.2% from $10.3 billion. Google subscriptions, platforms and devices revenue: $14.3 billion, up 11% from $12.9 billion. Alphabet revenue: $127.6 billion, up 25%.

How the Subscriber Count Has Moved

YouTube’s previous figure came on 5 March 2025, when Lyor Cohen, the company’s global head of music, wrote on the YouTube blog that "we’ve reached 125 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers globally, including trials." The new number is 25 million higher. Spread over roughly 19 months, that is an average of about 1.3 million additional subscribers a month, by simple arithmetic.

In between, the company spoke about growth without giving a count. On the first-quarter call in April 2026, Pichai said the service had its "largest quarterly increase in the total number of non-trial subscribers" since launch, in both the United States and globally, according to Digital Music News. Neither the earnings report nor the call gave a hard subscriber number at that point.

Pricing has also changed over the period. YouTube expanded its Premium Lite pilot to US users in March 2025, and upgraded the tier in February 2026. Digital Music News reports that the tier costs less than full Premium but does not include ad-free music or music videos.

The 150 million figure includes trials, and the earnings release gives no paid-only total for the service.

What the Number Does and Does Not Show

The 150 million figure includes trials, and the earnings release gives no paid-only total for the service. Comparisons with rival services therefore need care, because the figure includes people on free trials.

Tracking by Digital Music News’ research arm, DMN Pro, indicates that the service still trails larger rivals in the US. It found that Amazon Music had more than three times as many Individual subscribers as YouTube Music in the United States as of late 2025, even though Amazon lost paid users in 2025, and that Spotify and Apple Music also have materially larger US bases. The same tracking showed that only Deezer also posted a double-digit US subscriber rise in 2025, and that YouTube Music’s US subscribers rose by more than 45% year over year in the first quarter of 2026.

Google’s own revenue lines give context for the milestone. The subscriptions, platforms and devices revenue line grew by 11% in the quarter while YouTube advertising grew 9.2%, though the first of those figures also covers hardware and other products such as Google One, so the gap cannot be put down to YouTube Music alone.