YouTube’s the Problem, Not Billboard — And Everybody Agrees

YouTube head of music Lyor Cohen announces a Billboard boycott via YouTube’s Official Blog, December 17th.

For years, YouTube has refused to prioritize paying music subscribers – while artists and rights owners have decried the platform as exploitative. Should that be rewarded on Billboard’s charts?

Should every music stream count the same?

Perhaps that’s a philosophical question, though Billboard — and the broader music industry — decided long ago that all streams aren’t created equal. Accordingly, for years, Billboard has ranked streams from paying subscribers more heavily than free streams on its charts.

Now, YouTube has decided they have a big problem with that. Despite changes that would actually narrow the gap between paid and free weightings, YouTube Global Head of Music Lyor Cohen is suddenly refusing to allow YouTube streams to factor into Billboard’s charts.

So, should Billboard simply blow up their existing methodology so YouTube gets their participation trophy?

Yes, Billboard’s charts are a mess. But there’s a logic in all that messiness.

One can be excused for kvetching about Billboard’s hare-brained calculation methodologies. Somehow, a cabal of number-crunchers decided that an ‘album’ equals 1,000 streams from a paying subscriber, or that a vinyl LP purchase is worth 3,750 (or soon, 2,500) free streams of songs on that album.

It’s mishegas. But in fairness, there’s actually some logic at work behind the fog of Billboard’s chart chaos.

That logic goes something like this: more dedicated, paying fans – and their purchases – are far more valuable to the music industry and its artists, songwriters, publishers, and labels than freebie ad-supported ones. And the charts should reflect that.

The rest is just making up the numbers to fit. Paid stuff feeds the music industry, and accordingly, it weighs more heavily in the rankings. It’s logical enough.

Just one problem: in that framework, YouTube will never be a heavy chart influencer compared to other streaming platforms and formats. The harsh reality is that YouTube Music, once a promising paid platform, never materialized as a serious competitor to Apple Music or Spotify – and with the music subscription market now maturing, it’s unlikely to catch up.

DMN Pro has been tracking this closely, and the race isn’t playing out well for YouTube Music.

After a promising start, Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music have leapt ahead with enormous paid subscription leads. In fact, soon-to-be-released Q3 data from DMN Pro will reveal that Apple Music has 4 times as many paying subscribers as YouTube Music, with Spotify’s lead even greater.

Even Amazon Music, which has struggled against Apple and Spotify, is way ahead of YouTube Music. But how did YouTube Music fall so far behind?

Maybe the answer is that YouTube has never forced music fans to pay, even though prioritizing paid subscriptions could generate a transformative royalty stream for artists, songwriters, and IP owners like labels and publishers. It would also mean that YouTube streams would rank more heavily in Billboard’s charts.

That contrasts starkly with Apple Music, which only allows paying subscriptions. In fact, the platform was specifically built as premium-only by Jimmy Iovine and others. And despite refusing freebie listeners, Apple Music is currently dwarfing YouTube’s paid subscriber count — and spending big money on Super Bowl sponsorships, holiday live-stream extravaganzas, and more to attract additional sign-ups.

YouTube, on the other hand, would never dream of shutting down free access. But that choice has greater ramifications than just chart positioning.

As Irving Azoff has repeatedly emphasized, YouTube pays dramatically less than its competitors. Crunching the depressing numbers, Azoff has accused YouTube of paying artists just one-fifth of what Spotify and Apple Music pay, while being a corporate bully that threatens to remove content when it receives pushback during negotiations.

Sound familiar?

“YouTube is by far the worst offender,” Azoff stated at a recent industry conference. Breaking things down further, Azoff pointed out that YouTube generated $60 billion in revenue and paid only $8 billion to rights holders – about 13% – while Spotify generated roughly $18 billion in revenue and paid about $12 billion to music rights holders, nearly 67% of its revenue.

By any measure, Apple Music, Spotify, and others pay substantially better than YouTube. Yet somehow, YouTube argues it should have equal weight in the charts because of its cultural relevance?

But this gets even worse. Because platforms like Spotify and Apple Music gained those music subscribers despite the constant drag of YouTube’s free music access. According to industry scuttlebutt, Spotify might even have been willing to seriously limit, or even eliminate, free access if YouTube weren’t such a competitive threat to non-paying listeners.

The takeaway is clear: YouTube’s massive free tier has consistently undermined the entire subscription ecosystem that compensates artists at much higher rates.

So should Billboard — and the music industry — scrap its entire methodology so that ‘all streams are created equal,’ while completely disregarding the critical financial impact that paid streams offer artists and rights owners?

Perhaps instead of demanding that Billboard change its entire methodology, YouTube should change theirs.