YouTube Music starts testing new metric feature for artists

YouTube Music is always exploring new ways to make it easier for artists to measure their presence on their platform. The latest metric feature aimed at artists on YouTube Music allows them to estimate the number of unique users globally who have viewed or listened to their content.

The music streaming service confirmed it’s now testing a monthly audience metric, which updates daily to show an artist’s total number of unique listeners and viewers across all formats in the last 28 days.

This metric estimates the number of unique users globally from the past month across all YouTube formats such as YouTube, YouTube Music, and YouTube Kids. The Monthly Audience includes users who have viewed or listened to:

• 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 Monthly Audience feature is only available for some artists, while others continue to show their total “Subscribers” count during the testing phase.

YouTube Music’s new metric feature has many things in common with Spotify’s, including the fact that it refreshes every 28 days and that it shows “monthly listeners” for artists.

In fact, YouTube Music was probably heavily inspired by Spotify’s “monthly listeners” feature, although its own Monthly Audience feature doesn’t provide as much information as Spotify’s does, at least not in its beta form.