On today's episode, we discuss which pandemic-related behaviors will stick around, whether newsletters can replace local newspapers, YouTube and the music streaming wars, how you can master the intimacy of the inbox, why Amazon is opening a salon, the first movie to ever release a soundtrack, and more. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer analysts Nina Goetzen and Blake Droesch, and principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Jillian Ryan.

There will be 23.6 million YouTube Premium subscribers by the end of the year, which is up a healthy 18% over 2020.

YouTube Premium isn’t exclusively used for audio listening, but we included it in this forecast because most users who pay for YouTube use it to listen to music or podcasts at least once per month. Our YouTube Premium metric combines YouTube Premium and YouTube Music.

This year, one-tenth of US internet users will subscribe to YouTube Premium. Our forecasts includes subscribers to YouTube Premium and YouTube Music. (In September, Google disclosed that audio listening accounts for one-fourth of all time spent with YouTube.).

Following an announcement from YouTube Premium that they've hit 50 million subscribers worldwide, we have updated our US forecast to reflect the platforms uptick. We now forecast YouTube Premium will hit 29.5 million US subscribers by year-end 2021.

Time spent with digital audio has increased thanks to the emergence of streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stingray, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and Radioplayer Canada, which have expanded the digital listening menu. YouTube is also a go-to platform for podcasts.

Spotify has the most users among digital audio platforms, followed by Pandora, Amazon Music, and Apple Music. Amazon will surpass Pandora in listeners next year.

YouTube. This year, 87.9% of digital video viewers use YouTube. It will have 214.9 million viewers, or nearly two-thirds of the US population. For the first time, we broke out YouTube viewership by generation and ethnicity this year. Gen Z users are joining YouTube at the fastest rate. The number of Gen Z YouTube viewers will increase 7.2%, while other generations will be relatively flat.

Google Play Music is set to shut down later this year, and its parent company is working to make it easy for users to transfer their accounts to YouTube Music (another music-specific app), which offers integration with consumers’ YouTube accounts.

Apple Music listeners account for 30.3%, and YouTube Premium subscribers make up 19.4%. Pandora Premium patrons make up a significantly smaller slice of the subscription audio pie at just 5.4%. Looking ahead: We project that, while the rate of growth will continue to slow, over 130 million people in the US will subscribe to paid audio in 2023.

YouTube viewing is shifting to connected TV (CTV) screens, a behavioral change that could help make YouTube a powerful alternative for TV advertisers moving dollars to digital video.

Most labels, though, pointed to a strong rise in YouTube and Vevo streams, indicating that when stationary at home, many consumers prefer a visual music experience.”. One particular video conduit has certainly experienced a strong uptake in music-related consumption.