YouTube Music introduces its own version of the monthly listeners metric: All you need to know

YouTube Music has introduced its own version of the monthly listeners metric, popularized by Spotify. The new metric, titled Monthly Audience, will feature audience metrics for a 28-day cycle, as explained by an article on Google’s YouTube Music support site:

"We're introducing a new fan-facing public metric on YouTube Music: Monthly Audience. It will update daily to show an artist's total number of unique listeners and viewers across all formats in the last 28 days."

The article goes on to explain that the Monthly Audience metric will include content from all YouTube surfaces:

"Monthly Audience takes into account users listening or viewing an artist’s content across all formats on all YouTube surfaces, including YouTube, YouTube Music, and YouTube Kids."

It will also include all content formats, including Shorts and collaborations on other channels:

"Videos, including Shorts, uploaded by the artist or their label. Collaborations featuring the artist’s music uploaded to other channels. Videos, including Shorts, uploaded by fans with the artist’s music. Non-music content from the artist’s channel."

The feature is available to Official Artist Channels (OACs) only. To qualify, such channels must have at least 100,000 subscribers and more than 50,000 listeners as per the Monthly Audience cycle (28 days).

Doechii and Eminem top YouTube music Monthly Audience list

As per a report by Kurrco and other media publications, Doechii and Eminem are at the top of the new YouTube Music Monthly Audience list. Each has recorded 332 million viewers/listeners each in the last 28 days. The duo are followed by Dr. Dre with a 271 million monthly audience count, and then others.

YouTube’s music service previously utilized the same metrics as the other YouTube surfaces—subscriber count and per-video views. YouTube Music was introduced in 2015 in beta and rebranded in 2018, replacing Google Play Music as the primary music streaming service owned by Google.

YouTube’s music platform is among the top ten music streaming platforms of 2025, as per a report by SQ Magazine. However, it continues to lag behind competitors like Spotify and Tencent with just 9.1 percent of the music streaming market.

As of 2025, Spotify remains the most popular music streaming platform, followed by Tencent Music, Apple Music, and Amazon Music, with YouTube Music following behind.

YouTube started out in 2005. The primary website began gaining traction over other video platforms such as Vimeo (which was founded in 2004, a year earlier than YouTube), after NBC’s Saturday Night Live sketch “Lazy Sunday” was featured on the platform.

In 2006, Google acquired the platform for $1.65 billion USD, making it one of the largest acquisitions in the company’s history at the time. Currently, the Israeli cybersecurity firm Wiz holds the record for the largest, with an acquisition priced at $32 billion USD. However, the deal is still pending final approval.

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What many netizens may not know is that Google itself is currently a subsidiary under Alphabet Inc., which was created through a restructuring of Google in 2015.

After its acquisition by Google, YouTube began introducing its various surfaces, starting with YouTube Kids in 2015. This was followed by YouTube Music (in beta, 2015; rebranded 2018), and then YouTube Go in 2016 (discontinued in 2022). YouTube later introduced YouTube TV in 2017, its Movies & TV video-on-demand service in 2018, and Primetime Channels in 2022.

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