Lyor Cohen Isn’t Your Best Friend, But He’s Getting Results at YouTube Music.

Amazon Music is still more than double the size of YouTube Music in the US, but that lead is starting to narrow (Source: DMN Pro, Digital Music News)

YouTube Music head Lyor Cohen has been a music industry punching bag for the past few months. But he’s also getting a ton of new subscribers over at YouTube Music.

Depending on your perspective, YouTube’s Lyor Cohen is either the guy ruining Billboard’s charts and screwing artists, or a legendary music exec building YouTube Music.

Irving Azoff most certainly subscribes to the former: the fellow industry titan recently body-slammed Cohen as a ‘bully’ who presides over YouTube’s criminally low artist royalties. Actually, that’s the second body-slam from Azoff in a matter of months — all of which is putting a lot of strain on the DMN office popcorn maker.

Importantly, Cohen actually pulled YouTube’s music streams from Billboard’s ‘outdated’ charts following a disagreement tied to the way free streams are counted. That seemed to make sense given YouTube’s seemingly unimpressive performance attracting paid streaming music subscribers — or so we thought.

Now, the data is showing that Cohen’s Crew is finding a way to win — ever-so-slowly — on the paid subscriber front as well.

Per an exhaustively-large DSP data tranche parsed by DMN Pro, YouTube Music’s growth in US-based subscribers is suddenly spiking.

Putting things into proper perspective, YouTube Music is still a distant fourth place in the US-based DSP rankings with a market share of less than 9%. YouTube Music is also deeply behind market-leading gorillas Spotify and Apple Music, with Spotify’s subscriber base nearly 5 times as large as YouTube Music’s. But comebacks sometimes start from way behind.

YouTube Music Is Suddenly the Fastest-Growing Streaming Music Platform In the US — But Why?

Could we finally see a shakeup in the DSP subscriber rankings, particularly for subscriber-shedding heavyweight Amazon Music?

DMN Pro was first to sound the alarm on Amazon Music’s eroding paid subscriber numbers in 2024, and a recent price hike probably isn’t helping. Currently, Amazon Music boasts more than twice YouTube Music’s paid subscriber base, though a growth trend breakdown (above) shows that these arrows are moving in very different directions.

And a closer look at YouTube Music suggests these guys are putting in the hours. In 2025 alone, YouTube Music has undergone a flurry of enhancements spanning AI-driven radio, UI upgrades, lyrics enhancements, TikTok tie-ins, and even a deal with distant Alphabet relative Waymo.

But as DMN Pro details in its latest Weekly, a big driver of new subscribers may actually be YouTube Music’s umbrella service, YouTube Premium.

Suddenly, the power of the YouTube ecosystem might be proving seriously advantageous for YouTube Music.

One reason is YouTube’s crackdown on ad blockers, which appears to be driving strong Premium-tier growth. Instead of battling YouTube’s anti-blockers, why not pony up for an experience that includes ad-free videos, handy background-listening features, and a nicely-packaged premium music streaming service?

More cash-strapped YouTubers can opt for the cheaper Premium Lite plan to simply remove ads. But at a handsomely-packaged $13.99, the bundled Premium+Music offering — packaged with the aforementioned perks — seems to be clicking. Compare that to monthly subscription prices topping $12.99 at dominant platforms like Spotify and Amazon Music, and the math suddenly points to YouTube as the better deal.

That’s not all Cohen’s handiwork, though it does give Lyor more fuel to boost YouTube Music further — and even chase previously out-of-reach rivals like Amazon Music.