After nearly tens years as head of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki is stepping down to give way to a new era of the world’s most used streaming platform. In a memo the 54 year old Wojcicki stated that she, “decided to step back from my role as the head of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects I’m passionate about.
Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Head of Product will succeed her in the role as SVP and YouTube CEO.
During Wojcicki tenure at YouTube, the company contributed up to ten percent of parent company Alphabet’s revenue since the YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.65Bn in 2006. Last year the streaming website generated $29.2bn in advertising revenue.
Wojcicki joins other women executives in tech to resign recently such as Meta‘s Sheryl Sandberg.
“Susan has a unique place in Google history and has made the most incredible contribution to products used by people everywhere,” Larry Page and Sergey Brin said in a join statement. “We’re so grateful for all she’s done over the last 25 years.”
A petition created on Chang.org 6 years ago titled “Fire Susan Wojcicki as YouTube CEO” gained 243,481 supporters blamed Susan for being “out of touch” with both content creators and consumers.
As it relates to music, YouTube has lead the change for entrepreneurs and rights holders in the music landscape in many small countries that were excluded from the larger music eco-system globally. With their artists insights and ad driven content model, artist from countries like Jamaica have been able to both measure earn from the music and music videos directly.
In the last two years YouTube has paid out more than 10 billion dollars to artist and content creators according to Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s head of music.
In 2021 alone the company paid out $6 billion to rights holder and creators.
Between 2021 and 2021 YouTube paid $4B directly to the music industry according to Cohen the former head of Hip Hop music label Def Jam..
“Our foot is still planted on the gas pedal: In the 12 months between July 2021 and June 2022, YouTube paid over $6B to the music industry. This is a $2B increase from the $4B contribution we announced in 2021,” he said.
Lyor says YouTube’s mission is to make their ads and subscriptions model the #1 contributor of revenue to the industry by 2025.
Previously shorts were not monetized but as of today, YouTube is monetizing all music formats (short & long form video, audio tracks, live, etc.), on all platforms (desktop, tablet, mobile, and TV), in over 100 countries.
Announcements made by Cohen in his newsletter stated:
“UGC(User Generated Content) drove over 30% of payouts for artists, songwriters, and rights-holders, for the second year in a row.”
Shorts he says generates ’30 billion views per day’, as he announced YouTube’s $100M Shorts Fund.
YouTube is the largest music platform in the world with over 2.3 billion users and one of the largest social media platforms, second only to Facebook, according to Statista.
Artists and labels have often decried the service’s royalty rates, typically far lower than those offered by Spotify or Apple Music; YouTube’s defenders argue it’s still an improvement over radio, which has historically paid recording artists nothing, compensating songwriters only.
Jamaica & YouTube
Over the last year, Jamaica saw more artists than ever moving from obscurity to celebrity and commanding more than $50,000 per show from their YouTube hits.
Skeng, who scored several Jamaican YouTube hits last year got 2 collabs with Nicki Minaj due to the success on his songs Protocol and Gvman Shift which are the top two YouTube songs in Jamaica on the platform.
Skeng told World Music Views exclusively that working with the Queen New York MC is a blessing.
He said, “Nicki Minaj and Skeng Likkle Miss Remix is a good look. Is not everybody weh me meet pon dah music journey yah who show interest or believe inah me. Me try only give my energy to the ones who show the truth.”
“Working with Nicky is an achievement and a blessing. Dancehall active you see it,” he continued.
The Ratty Gand DJ was also the No. 1 YouTube artist in Jamaica for most of 2022 with 100 million streams across his catalogue.
He signed a publishing deal with with Geejam Music last year from the success of his YouTube hits.
