YouTube Squashes Feud With Billboard Charts

In 2025, YouTube announced it would no longer submit its streams for Billboard consideration, due to the company’s decision to weigh subscriber streams more favorably than ones on the platform’s free, ad-supported tier. At the time, Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s global head of music, referred to the change as an “outdated formula” that “ignores the massive engagement from fans who don’t have a subscription.” Well forget all of that, because YouTube has reversed course.

“We are returning to the Billboard charts starting in 2027,” Cohen wrote in an updated note to his original blog. “Billboard’s new methodology better reflects how fans engage with music today across both subscription and ad-supported services.” As Coen notes, Billboard recently cut down the ratio of streams between the subscriber and ad-supported tiers from 1:2.5 to 1:1.5 (in other words, now one subscriber stream counts as much as one-and-a-half ad-supported streams, rather than the previous two and a half). The change takes effect on January 16.

It’s unclear why YouTube was down with the soon-to-be-updated radio rather than the 1:1 Cohen initially hinted at in his first post. We’ve asked the company’s reps for comment. Until then, stan accounts are now free to include YouTube again in their attempts to push their faves up the Billboard 200.

Alex Suskind has overseen music coverage for New York magazine’s Vulture and, before that, Entertainment Weekly. He has written about TV, film, technology, politics, and tons of other stuff for The Guardian, Vanity Fair, and The Fader. ... Read More