Coachella’s all six stages will be streamed live online across both weekends in April for the first time. The live YouTube stream promises performances from Bad Bunny, BLACKPINK, Calvin Harris, Rosalía, Gorillaz, Burna Boy, Becky G, Wet Leg, Benee, Willow, Bjork, The Comet is Coming, Murder Capital, Yves Tumor, Kaytranada, Boygenius, Weyes Blood, and many more. Coachella’s weekend one livestream will launch on Friday, April 14th at 4:00 p.m. PT, with weekend two following on Friday, April 21st at the same time.

In the latest Trapital podcast, Dan Runcie talks to MIDiA Research’s Tati Cirisano about short form video and the three-sided battleground being fought between TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels. Questions asked were which company added the most value - to artists and creators, to the music industry, and to its parent company. The conclusions: TikTok is the most valuable to artists and creators given its massive reach and cultural cache. YouTube Shorts is the one that’s most valuable to music since strong agreements are in place, and YouTube is proud of the billions it pays to the industry. Reels is the most valuable for its parent company.

"YouTube paid out $6 billion to the music industry in a 12-month span and wants to surpass Spotify to become the industry’s largest revenue source. It started a $100 million fund to grow YouTube Shorts and take on TikTok" - Trapital's Dan Runcie looks into the YotuTube ambition and makes a few predictions.

Very interesting Trapital memo and podcast about the differences between Spotify and YouTube, and how artists can take advance of each service. One of the points: "Spotify is a place where you can monetize scale, but you can’t monetize niche. YouTube is an ecosystem where you can monetize both".

Music Business Worldwide is pretty much impressed by the latest YouTube revenue numbers: the world’s largest video platform generated $7.205 billion in revenues from advertising in Q3 this year, up 43%, or by over $2 billion, year-on-year versus the same quarter of 2020. In the first nine months of this year, YouTube generated $20.21 billion from advertising, more than it generated from ads in the entirety of both 2020 ($19.77bn) and 2019 ($15.15bn). To put that in perspective - in 2019, the global record industry generated $20.2 billion in global wholesale revenues. In 2020, it generated $21.6 billion.

YouTube has taken down R. Kelly's video channels “in accordance with creator responsibility guidelines” on the social network, Reuters reports. Channel owners convicted of egregious crime may be barred if the content is closely related to the crime, making Kelly liable on the basis that he used his fame and power to establish his racketeering enterprise. R. Kelly songs uploaded by other channels, however, do not violate the creator responsibility guidelines, and his songs and albums remain available on YouTube.

YouTube has surpassed the milestone of 50 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers, growing its subscriber base by around 20 million in the past 11 months, or around 1.8m subscribers per month since October 2020, MBW reports on the music stat. YouTube's biggest rival Spotify's global Premium Subscriber base grew to 165 million in Q2 2021, which was up 20% year-on-year. Apple Music in June 2019 announced it had surpassed 60 million subscribers.

In the three months to the end of June 2021 (Q2), YouTube generated a whopping $7.002 billion from advertising alone – equivalent to approximately $77 million a day, or $3.2 million every hour, Music Business Worldwide reports. The rise is astonishing - YouTube’s Q2 2021 ad revenue was up by 83.7% on the equivalent figure from 2020. In the six months to the end of June this year, the platform generated $13.007 billion in ad revenues, almost double what YouTube generated in the equivalent six months of 2020 ($7.850 billion). These numbers don’t include subscription revenue on YouTube generated by those customers paying for YouTube Music and YouTube Premium each month. Looking back, the numbers impress even more - YouTube rode out 2020 having generated some $19.77 billion from ads in the year – actually up 30.5% on the equivalent annual figure from 2019.

A police officer from Oakland, California played a Taylor Swift song on his phone in a bid to prevent activists who were filming him uploading the video to YouTube, since the video platform regularly removes videos that break music copyright rules, Variety reports. The video was filmed by members of the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP), which says it is a coalition that seeks to "eradicate police terror in communities of colour". The officer's efforts were in vain as the clip of the encounter in Alameda County promptly went viral and remained on YouTube.

YouTube won a legal victory in the EU this week, after the European Court of Justice ruled that the platform and other user generated content-reliant platforms should not be held liable for users uploading infringing content. "As currently stands, operators of online platforms do not, in principle, themselves make a communication to the public of copyright-protected content illegally posted online by users of those platforms" - ECJ ruled. The court added that such platforms can still be held liable however, if they have "specific knowledge that protected content is available illegally" on their platforms, yet refrain "from expeditiously deleting it or blocking access to it".

YouTube paid artists, songwriters, and rights-holders over $4 billion in the last 12 months – money derived from both YouTube ads and YouTube Music / YouTube Premium subscriptions, YouTube’s Global Head of Music Lyor Cohen confirmed in a fresh newsletter sent to the music industry, Music Business Worldwide reports. YouTube paid the music industry over $3bn in 2019, and the streaming service added more paid ‘members’ in Q1 21 than in any other quarter since launch. Cohen states that the Alphabet-owned platform’s goal is now “to become the leading revenue generator for the music industry”. Spotify paid out over $5 billion to the music industry in 2020.

ouTube Shorts has launched its ‘Shorts Fund’ worth $100 million that will be distributed to its creators over the course of 2021-2022, TechCrunch reports. Shorts Fund will be available to anyone creating original content for Shorts, with the company saying “thousands of creators” will be paid for their content on Shorts through the Fund. Creators won’t be able to apply for the fund. Instead, YouTube will reach out and reward creators whose videos have exceeded certain milestones each month, including engagement and view counts.

YouTube generated $6.005 billion from advertising in the three months to end of March this year, which is up by nearly $2 billion, or by 49%, on the $4.038 billion YouTube generated in the same period of 2020, Music Business Worldwide reports on staggering numbers by the streaming platform. Compared to 2019 the numbers are even more impressive - in Q1 2019 YouTube had $3.025 billion in revenues. If YouTube can maintain that +49% growth across the course of 2021, it will turn over more than $29 billion this year. The number MBW isn't giving is how much of that $6 billion YouTube made during the three first months of the year is going to artists.

Routenote brings the numbers in - lists the ten largest music streaming services by number of tracks in their catalogue. The undisputable No. 1 is SoundCloud with 200 million songs, Deezer follows with 72 million songs, while the next five - Apple Music, Tidal, Spotify, Amazon, Qobuz - host around 70 million songs each. Napster follows with 60 million, while YouTube Music and KKBOX round up the Top 10 with 50 million songs each.

Paying more for the streaming of music could have a“potentially devastating” effect on the income of artists and songwriters - YouTube has warned the UK music industry following their efforts to force the video streaming giant to raise the amount it pays, Guardian reports. The Charlatans‘ Tim Burgess has written a piece in the Guardian as well speaking out against purported inequalities in streaming payments: "I’m not averse to the idea of a musical reset: using the pandemic as an opportunity to look again at how things are working in the industry. To take this moment and this strange landscape we find ourselves in, and just switch things off and back on again".

YouTube has launched a global grant program for Black creators on the platform, using capital from its $100 million #YouTubeBlack Voices Fund, Billboard reports. The inaugural class of 132 grant recipients includes 21 music artists from around the world - Brent Faiyaz, BRS Kash, Fireboy DML, Jean Dawson, Jensen McRae, Jerome Farah, Joy Oladokun, KennyHoopla, Mariah the Scientist, MC Carol, Miiesha, Myke Towers, Péricles, Rael, Rexx Life Raj, Sauti Sol, serpentwithfeet, Sho Madjozi, Tkay Maidza, Urias and Yung Baby Tate.

"YouTube famously hinges on an algorithm that guesses viewers' interests to keep them clicking and viewing" - Ars Technica writes about the unexpected rise in popularity of Japanese 1980s ambient music, thanks to the video social network. The most famous upload of them all came in 2017, when a video of the 1984 city pop song 'Plastic Love' by Mariya Takeuchi became "mind-bogglingly popular. It has 45 million views today, along with an Olympic swimming pool's worth of fan art, vaporwave remixes, and memes".

YouTube has just announced its milestone of reaching two billion music users on the platform, MusicAlly reports. In mid-2018 YouTube had one billion users, by the end of 2019 the number rose to 1,2 billion, and in the year of the lockdown it climbed sharply to today's two billion. Speaking in terms of money, Google is now the second largest global payer of music royalties, with $5.2 billion across free and paid as well as masters and publishing (Spotify takes the top spot). In 2019, YouTube generated $15.2 billion in ad revenue with $4 billion of that music related.

The UK government is to launch an investigation on whether the artists are paid fairly by streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music, BBC reports. Music streaming in the UK brings in more than £1bn a year in revenue, however, artists can be paid as little as 13% of the income generated. Spotify is thought to pay between £0.002 and £0.0038 per stream, Apple Music pays about £0.0059, with YouTube paying the least - about £0.00052 per stream.

Google Play Music is going to be fully shut down later this years, which means YouTube will be the only streaming music option from the company. Google Play Music has been a very easy way to upload CDs and purchased music from other platforms into a single cloud, accessible anywhere. Google says now they would be rolling out a new, simple way for users of its Play Music offering to transfer files over to YouTube Music. AJOMT analyzes what happens next...

YouTube handed music rightsholders over $3bn from ads and subscriptions combined in the 12 calendar months of 2019, according to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki. She further claims that YouTube has paid out over $12bn to the music industry in total to date. In comparison, Google/Alphabet recently revealed that YouTube generated $15.15bn in advertising revenues last year. Business Music Worldwide analyses what these numbers mean for the music industry.

The first episode of Justin Bieber's docuseries 'Seasons' has broken a record for YouTube with 32,65 million views in its first week. That beat out original comedy 'Liza On Demand' Season 2 debut (25.4 million) and the first episode of 'Cobra Kai' Season 2 (21 million). YouTube paid upwards of $20 million for the 10-part Bieber docuseries, making it YouTube’s most expensive content acquisition to date.

Music videos generate the highest return-on-investment for YouTube despite making up only about 5% of all videos uploaded, according to a new analysis. Music and music-related videos had a collective 1.987 trillion views on YouTube in 2018 (an average of 16,937 views per video), representing 20% of all views on the platform. Further on, music videos all […]

YouTube says it has deleted more than half of the "violent" music videos that Britain's most senior police officer asked it to take down - Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has blamed some videos for fuelling a surge in murders and violent crime in London - and singled out drill music. She asked YouTube to […]