# How does YouTube split Premium payments between multiple channels/video creators? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 27, 2026, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-split-premium-payments-between-multiple-channels-video-creators/1027094 "2026-01-27T16:01:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2026, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-split-premium-payments-between-multiple-channels-video-creators/1027094/1 "2026-01-27T16:01:03Z")
(Putting this in IMHO because as far as I can tell, there isn’t one simple factual answer to this… maybe it differs depending on topic, specific individual, etc.? Not sure. Anecdotes welcome too.) I subscribe to YouTube Premium at about $13/mo. I tend to watch content mostly from the same dozen or so channels. The one I get most excited about is [Practical Engineering](https://www.youtube.com/@PracticalEngineeringChannel), which puts out an hour-long video every month or so. But the cat’s favorite channel is [Birder King](https://www.youtube.com/@BirderKing), and I’ll sometimes keep it on for him when I leave the house. So, using those two examples, each month I watch about an hour of Practical Engineering (in one video) and the cat watches maybe twenty hours of Birder King (in maybe 4-5 videos). Is the revenue split between them closer to 1:1 (channels subscribed), 1:5 (videos watched), or 1:20 (hours watched)? Or some other formula altogether? Is my cat taking precious income away from our poor, starving engineers? Each Practical Engineering episode takes weeks of research, filming, editing, model-building, interviews, fact-checking, animations, etc. Birder King just sticks a webcam next to a bird feeder. Is it a way to just game the YouTube monetization algorithm?