#TheWeeklyRoundUp - 03.09.21

YouTube Music Surpasses 50 Million Subscribers (MBW)

Watch out Spotify.

Back in June, YouTube‘s Global Head of Music, Lyor Cohen, suggested that YouTube Music was the “fastest growing subscription service out there”.

Today, he’s doubled down on that claim, via the announcement that YouTube has surpassed the milestone of 50 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers, including triallists. (YouTube Music is available as a standalone subscription platform, or bundled into a YouTube Premium subscription.)

The last subscriber figure to be publicly announced for YouTube Music came in October 2020, when Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that YouTube had “over 30 million” YouTube Music and/or YouTube Premium subs.

This means that YouTube Music has grown its subscriber base by around 20m in the past 11 months, or in other words, it’s added around 1.8m subscribers per month since October 2020.

Rival Spotify revealed in July that its global Premium Subscriber base grew to 165 million in Q2 2021 (ended June 30), which was up 20% year-on-year, and up by 4%, or 7 million subscribers, on the 158m that SPOT counted at the end of the prior quarter (Q1 2021).

Apple Music, meanwhile, announced it had surpassed 60m subscribers in June 2019, but hasn’t confirmed an updated subs number since then.

Cohen revealed the 50m milestone in his industry newsletter today (September 2), in which he notes that YouTube Music is “seeing impressive growth in countries like South Korea, India, Japan, Russia, and Brazil”.

He also stated that YouTube is “investing in new features and exclusive benefits for our members”.

“We’re not taking our foot off the gas anytime soon.”

Lyor Cohen, YouTube

Said Cohen: “We’ve got killer products in YouTube Music and YouTube Premium that deliver truly unique value to artists and creators and the best experience for music fans and video lovers. We’re in our own lane.

“There’s no other place where fans can get uninterrupted access to the largest and most diverse catalog of music, artists, and culture. We’re making it easy for music fans to go deep and find their thing – whether that’s on YouTube or the YouTube Music app.”

He added: “We’re not taking our foot off the gas anytime soon. Thanks for coming along on this ride with us.”

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RiSA launches Official South African Music Charts - here's how they will collect data (Channel 24)

1. The Recording Industry of South Africa (RiSA) has launched the very first Official South African Music Chart (TOSAC).

2. According to a press statement, the chart will start off with a focus on singles, aggregating data from Spotify, Deezer and Apple Music.

3. Every week, TOSAC will rank the "Weekly Top 200 Tracks", with a focus on the most popular local and international songs, and the "Weekly Top 100 Local ZA Tracks", with a focus on SA music only.

RiSA has announced the launch of the very first Official South African Music Chart (TOSAC) - "A first, both in scale and magnitude, in the country."

In a press statement, the organisation explained that the chart would start "with a focus on 'singles' in the digital music streaming space".

"We are incredibly excited to be launching such a pioneering platform for the South African music industry and audiences, across different genres. This represents a significant milestone and a much-needed step up to aligning with popular forms of music consumption for the local music industry," said RiSA chairperson Sean Watson.

RiSA CEO, Nhlanhla Sibisi, added: "We have a robust music industry in our country, and our people have a natural thirst for music. We have also seen an undeniable shift in how people consume music in the past few years, with more and more audiences making use of streaming services than before. We are thus excited to put in place an offering that not only recognises that but is set to help drive the growth of our industry."

Here's how the Official South African Music Charts will work:

How content will be aggregated:

1. Chart week is from Friday to Thursday

2. Only digital streaming numbers are used

3. The amount of streams displayed in the charts is always weighted, so that subscription streams have more relevance than ad-funded streams

4. No track exclusion policy or Accelerated Decline method is currently being applied.

Different versions of a track are aggregated to their corresponding original track. This includes:

1. Radio edits

2. Same song with additional featuring artists

3. DJ remixes, as long as the original artist is credited

4. Different language/country versions

Album covers are not aggregated to the original track

What to expect:

The "Weekly Top 200 Tracks" will look at all songs streamed in SA (local and international music), while the "Weekly Top 100 Local ZA Tracks" will focus on South African music, or tracks where at least one of the credits is a local artist.

The TOSAC website went live on 2 September at 12:00