YouTube dished out over $30 billion to creators, artists, and more in the past three years

It’s safe to say that YouTube gets a lot of visits (it’s currently the second most visited website in the world). Because of this success, YouTube makes a lot of money. Seriously, it’s a lot. So much so that YouTube’s CEO, Susan Wojcicki, published a letter saying that the company has paid out over $30 billion to creators, artists, and media organizations in the last three years.

This letter to creators for 2021 is a first from Wojcicki and basically addresses some of the obstacles thrown at the company in the previous year. A lot of it focuses on growth as well. Obviously, with the pandemic, growth exploded for YouTube. The company saw a 25 percent increase in watch time around the world. Daily live streams grew by 45 percent too.

A lot more folks are signing up for the company’s Partner Program, which allows creators to make money from advertising revenues, as well. YouTube says this number grew more than double in 20201. YouTube says it “contributed approximately $16 billion to the U.S. GDP in 2019, supporting the equivalent of 345,000 full time jobs,” which Wojcicki references an Oxford Economics report.

The letter is long and it’s totally worth a read. It addresses a mountain of other issues like transparency, responsibilities of the company, and building an overall better future at YouTube. You can read the full post here.

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Kevin Raposo

Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com or find him on Mastodon or Post.