YouTube Paid More Than $1 Billion to the Music Industry This Year

YouTube has announced that in the last 12 months it has paid out $1 billion dollars in ad revenue to the music industry, “demonstrating that multiple experiences and models are succeeding alongside each other,” according to a press release from Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl. The company predicts even more growth in the near future, as online services continue to draw more ad dollars. “In the future, the music business has an opportunity to look a lot like television,” Kyncl posits, “where subscriptions and advertising contribute roughly equal amounts of revenue, bolstered by digital and physical sales.”

This optimistic outlook reflects comments made by YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, Neal Mohan, earlier this year, saying, “the industry’s future is actually brighter than ever” with more digital-advertising revenues on the horizon. “It’s easy to dismiss ad-supported models today while digital streaming is still small and relatively new,” he said. “The truth is, it is a new source of revenue that is poised to dramatically increase.”

Read Pitchfork’s feature, “The Year in Streaming.”

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