YouTube turns 20: 20 billion videos, 20 million daily uploads and a reinvention
YouTube’s subscription business is also growing steadily, with the platform recently crossing 125 million subscribers globally across its Music and Premium services.
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YouTube has marked its 20th anniversary with staggering new milestones and a fresh round of feature upgrades, underscoring its evolution from a scrappy startup to a global video behemoth. As of April 2025, the Google-owned platform now hosts over 20 billion videos, with an average of 20 million new uploads each day, spanning music, Shorts, podcasts and creator content across genres. In 2024 alone, YouTube users averaged 100 million daily comments and racked up 3.5 billion likes per day, highlighting its unmatched engagement at a time when competition for user attention has never been more intense.
More than 300 music videos on the platform have now crossed 1 billion views, with Adele’s Hello hitting the mark in just 88 days, followed closely by Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You, Luis Fonsi’s Despacito, J Balvin and Willy William’s Mi Gente, and ROSÉ and Bruno Mars’ APT, each doing so in just over three months — proof that global music discovery continues to thrive on YouTube.
To mark the milestone, YouTube has rolled out a host of new features designed to make viewing faster, smarter and more personal. Premium users on mobile can now watch videos at 4x playback speed, while the television experience is getting a revamp with smoother navigation, better playback controls and quicker access to comments, channel information and the subscribe button. Voice replies to comments — a feature previously limited to a small group of creators — will soon be available more widely, and YouTube TV is introducing customisable multiviews, starting with non-sports content and expanding to more channels, allowing viewers to watch up to four live streams on a single screen.
YouTube’s subscription business is also growing steadily, with the platform recently crossing 125 million subscribers globally across its Music and Premium services. To push adoption further, YouTube has introduced a new, lower-cost ad-free tier in the US called 'Premium Lite', which offers ad-free access to most videos, though not music, Shorts or offline/background play.
In recent years, Google has leaned heavily into monetising YouTube through a mix of price hikes, anti-adblocker enforcement and broader product innovation. While YouTube’s total revenue isn’t disclosed quarterly, CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed in late 2024 that it had crossed $50 billion in revenue over a 12-month period for the first time — a sign that YouTube, even at 20, is still just getting started.
