According to an SEC filing related to Alphabet’s newly-announced Q4 results, YouTube generated $19.78 billion from advertising across the course of calendar 2020. That figure was up by over $4.6bn on the $15.15bn that YouTube generated in 2019.
Some interesting music-related facts to understand that $19.78bn number:
(a) It represents a turnover of just above $54m per day at YouTube.
(b) It’s more than double Spotify‘s turnover in 2020 (€7.88bn / $9.0bn).
(c) The growth in YouTube’s ad sales year-on-year (+$4.6bn) is roughly the same amount of money that Sony‘s global recorded music operation generated in revenues in 2020.
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Last month, YouTube, made a submission to a UK Parliamentary Inquiry on the Economics of Streaming. The submission confirmed that YouTube had paid out a lifetime total of USD $12 billion to music rightsholders from its advertising and subscription businesses as of January 2020. In its submission, YouTube claims that “record labels agree it is possible we will become the music industry’s number one source of revenue by 2025”.