After being on Google’s Play Store for 7 years, YouTube Music has just hit 5 billion downloads. In its very early days, there was a lot of controversy over the platform.

When YouTube Music was first introduced in 2019, there was a lot of upset because it had replaced the popular Google Play Music. Many users of the Google music store refused to transfer their library and data across to YouTube.
After all, if they wanted to use YouTube, they could use the original platform, right? Over time, it seems a lot of this upset has simmered down, Android even install YouTube Music onto every device automatically. So, there has been a lot of room for expansion.
YouTube Music is the default streaming platform on any Android, despite being able to download their rivals. It’s likely this collaboration has increased downloads, however. For comparison, Spotify has 1 billion downloads on the same Play Store.
Considering Spotify is arguably the most popular streaming platform, these numbers are staggering. Spotify is essentially the middle man, since iOS users have Apple Music. However, despite this, they still remain the most popular choice.
YouTube Music is included for free within YouTube Premium packages, so it’s likely many who have subscribed to this, also go on to download the music platform. Nonetheless, it’s a huge achievement for any app, and should be noted.
