YouTube’s Subscription Businesses Get a New Boss
The streaming platform reorganized its product teams into three groups that focus on subscriptions, viewer products, and creator and community projects.
As part of a significant reorganization of its product teams, YouTube promoted Christian Oestlien, previously vp of product management, to lead a team responsible for subscription products across YouTube Music, YouTube TV and YouTube Premium. As vp of YouTube’s subscription products, Oestlien will also oversee podcasts, commerce and YouTube Primetime Channels.
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YouTube also created two other product organizations. Viewer Products, to be led by Johanna Voolich, will focus on the viewer experience through such products as the main YouTube app, living room and search. YouTube has not yet hired a lead for creator and community products, which will focus on supporting YouTube creators. Oestlien, Voolich, and the eventual creator and community projects lead will report directly to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan. News of the reorganization was first reported by Variety and was confirmed to Billboard by a YouTube representative.
While YouTube has made its name streaming ad-supported videos to billions of viewers globally, its subscription business has more than 125 million paying customers across both YouTube Premium and YouTube Music, the company announced in March. The combined free-paid platform generated $8 billion for the music business in the 12-month period ended June 30, YouTube global head of music Lyor Cohen announced at Billboard Latin Music Week on Oct. 22.
The TV is an increasingly important screen for YouTube, which is best known for its origins on web browsers and proliferation on smartphone apps. YouTube had the largest share of TV viewing in the U.S. in July with a 13.4% share, according to Nielsen. Netflix was No. 2 at 8.8% and Disney was No. 3 with 4.7%.
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