Image credit: YouTube

YouTube has reached a new landmark for subscribers as they reveal some astonishing secrets about their position for their 20th anniversary.

Would you believe that YouTube has now been online for 20 years. The world’s favourite video site has come a long way since their very first video: Me at the zoo. In fact, YouTube have shared just how far they’ve come to celebrate their anniversary.

YouTube’s Global Head of Music, Lyor Cohen, shared in a blog post that they have now reached a new milestone of 125 million subscribers. YouTube’s subscribers are shared across their ad-free video service YouTube Premium and their music streaming platform YouTube Music.

With the announcement of their milestone, Cohen announced: “This momentum is critical to our goal of becoming the No. 1 contributor of revenue to the industry, and we won’t stop until we get there.”

YouTube also remains the number one streaming platform in the U.S., with over 1 billion hours of YouTube content watched on TVs daily. For the second year in a row, Nielsen have ranked YouTube as the top video streaming platform for watch time in the United States.

Looking to the future, Cohen announced the expansion of YouTube Premium Lite to U.S. users. The cheaper alternative to YouTube Premium offers ad-free viewing on the majority of videos without extra features like YouTube Music Premium, downloads, and background play.

Whilst it is early days for Premium Lite, YouTube seem positive about their pilot testing of the subscription tier. They found that more Lite members upgraded to a full Premium subscription than Premium members were downgrading to Premium Lite.

Cohen writes: “I know there’s uncertainty in the world and in our industry, but in my 9 years at YouTube and 40 years in the business, I’ve learned that uncertainty and challenges signal great opportunity. I cannot wait to see what the next 20 years of YouTube holds.”