Uploaded August 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
YouTube Music has 125 million paying subscribers, yet almost no one seems to use it. Most of those subscribers aren’t choosing it for music at all—it’s bundled inside YouTube Premium, which people buy for ad-free videos. And when we look at actual music streaming, Spotify dominates with over 263 million paying users, while Apple Music and even Amazon Music beat YouTube Music on quality, features, and loyalty. Despite Google’s massive reach, YouTube Music feels like an afterthought: cluttered recommendations, weak audio quality, slow feature rollouts, and zero emotional pull. People already use YouTube for music mixes, but when it comes to serious music streaming, they reach for Spotify or Apple Music out of habit and trust. It’s the same old Google story: big numbers on paper, low real adoption.
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/hariharan-jayakumar-silo
Instagram: instagram.com/hariharan.jayakumar
Timestamps:
0:00 - The State Of YouTube Music
0:26 - The Subscriber Mirage
2:42 - Google’s Adoption Curse
7:10 - The Hidden Cost
Resources: pastebin.com/BPzS2GzY
YouTube Music has 125 million paying subscribers, yet almost no one seems to use it. Most of those subscribers aren’t choosing it for music at all—it’s bundled inside YouTube Premium, which people buy for ad-free videos. And when we look at actual music streaming, Spotify dominates with over 263 million paying users, while Apple Music and even Amazon Music beat YouTube Music on quality, features, and loyalty. Despite Google’s massive reach, YouTube Music feels like an afterthought: cluttered recommendations, weak audio quality, slow feature rollouts, and zero emotional pull. People already use YouTube for music mixes, but when it comes to serious music streaming, they reach for Spotify or Apple Music out of habit and trust. It’s the same old Google story: big numbers on paper, low real adoption.
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/hariharan-jayakumar-silo
Instagram: instagram.com/hariharan.jayakumar
Timestamps:
0:00 - The State Of YouTube Music
0:26 - The Subscriber Mirage
2:42 - Google’s Adoption Curse
7:10 - The Hidden Cost
Resources: pastebin.com/BPzS2GzY
