YouTube’s Lizzie Dickson on Championing British Music After Banner Year: ‘Authenticity Is What Cuts Through’

When Lizzie Dickson joined YouTube in 2015, the music industry was a very different place. Streaming services were still a nascent (but growing) force, while live performances and tours still had untapped commercial potential for artists. Music videos made up most of an artist’s visual output, a medium that had stayed relatively unchanged since the emergence of the form in the 1980s.

A decade on, Dickson, head of music in the U.K., is enjoying the fast-paced revolution of both the music and tech industries and changing habits of the service’s users. “There’s such a variety of touchpoints that people can engage with and artists can release music by now,” she says from YouTube’s London headquarters. “The size of the global stage has grown which is an amazing opportunity for artists around the world, and the accessibility of global music has exploded in that time.” 

She points to YouTube having established itself as an alternative to traditional terrestrial and cable television services, and the growth of communal watching experiences on the platform as a recent trend. Similarly, YouTube’s recent Global Impact report found that viewers in the U.K. were leading in consuming long-form videos and seeking “more profound and more insightful content.”

It coincides with a banner year for U.K. music. In 2025, a number of artists found their place on the world stage: Olivia Dean, Lola Young, RAYE, Yungblud, and Central Cee have established themselves as essential figuress on the global stage. Tours by Oasis, Dua Lipa and Coldplay have dominated box office numbers and cultural conversations. “The UK has always been a global leader in exporting music and always will be,” Dickson proudly says, “so if the industry keeps on signing brilliant acts we’ll keep supporting them.”

Speaking as YouTube celebrates its 20th anniversary – and the fifth anniversary for its streaming offering YouTube Music – Dickson reflects on Dean’s journey as an artist, the role YouTube can play in championing both long-form and short-form content, and how her London-based team’s energetic spirit continues to spark new ideas and discoveries.

What are the biggest changes you’ve seen over your time at YouTube in the past decade?

Definitely how people are consuming music and the variety of music that’s on offer. There’s also been a proliferation of content, which feels unique to YouTube as well. You’ve got formats like Tiny Desk and Colors sessions which have grown on YouTube and are still going strong. They sit alongside the opportunity to fall into a podcast and go for an in-depth conversation with the artist about how a record or song was made, and then see it live in a performance. That’s our strength: to build a world of multi-format content around an artist.

How has YouTube been able to not just adapt to that change, but lead it?

Our mission is to be the best place for every fan and that YouTube where there’s a world to fall into when you discover that artist. There’s been a lot of work on our side to make sure to create magic moments between artists and fans. That includes adding features and places for people to congregate and leave comments, especially when there’s premieres of content of a music video or a live moment that an artist wants to show off. Then also making sure that artists have the opportunity to sell merch or tickets to their shows. We want there to be a two-way conversation between artists and fans, and to make sure YouTube feels like a place where fandom can grow.

The archive of content YouTube hosts is a big part of that right?

For sure. I saw a great example of it today, actually, on a RAYE video. Someone wrote in the comments that they discovered RAYE through a Grammy performance on YouTube, then found a video of her Royal Albert Hall performance which blew their mind, and then bought tickets for their whole family for RAYE’s next tour. That is exactly the journey we want people to be taking.

Do you think that the music industry – and YouTube – has found a balance between prioritizing both long-form and short-form content?

Long-form content and the storytelling that comes with it is something that we’re really focused on. People watching YouTube on their television, for example, is our fastest growing surface, and we’re hearing from our partners and artists that often the TV is the most-watched surface for a live concert or series – that’s incredibly exciting and important for the years ahead. We want to be able to harness that opportunity for people to congregate around the TV as it feels like a big growth area, and such an important way for artists to communicate visually through their art.

We’ve seen that with Olivia Dean, with one of her biggest videos being a performance from the Jazz Cafe in London which is 35 minutes long. There’s that feeling that when people want to discover an artist they want to be able to sit with something long-form to understand the way someone performs or the story behind a record. Short-form is great, but it feels more ephemeral. Artists always want to tell a story, so having the time and space to do something longer creates that deeper fandom and connection.

What’s your overall assessment of the British music scene in 2025? The conversation in 2024 was quite downbeat, but there’s been a massive turnaround.

I think we’re in the most exciting moment for British music for a long time. I’m thrilled to see Olivia [Dean], in particular, explode around the world as she’s such an amazing talent and someone who always had a deep integrity in making sure she tells her story her way and represents herself visually. In addition to her we’ve got RAYE and Sam Fender, who had an excellent record this year, but also the newcomers like Sasha Keable, Sienna Spiro, and Skye Newman who all feel like they could continue this momentum into 2026. 

Lola Young is another artist who has really made the most of that relationship with YouTube… 

Lola is such an amazing visual artist. She made a music video for every song on her record [I’m Only F***ing My Self] and wanted to tell that story, so YouTube worked with her on a fan event at Outernet in London and projected the visuals for every song onto the massive screens they have there. Fans were able to hear that music for the first time alongside these visuals, as well as a long-form conversation with Annie Mac.

It was a special way for fans to understand the whole body of work and to spend time with it, but also understand the visual references. Lola’s visuals are incredibly strong and important to her entire output, and to give that stage for fans to truly immerse themselves in it was really important.

In a recent conversation with Billboard‘s editor-in-chief Hannah Karp, Lyor Cohen said that being a “real artist takes time.” Do you agree with that assessment?

Definitely. A lot of artists like Olivia, for example, we’ve known them for a long time and been to their smallest shows as fans. To be side-by-side on these journeys is a real privilege and its even more exciting when global success follows because its so well-deserved. YouTube is a great place to be building because the content we create truly lives forever and is accessible, and time and time again when the moment comes for these artists, people want to go back to the beginning and watch videos from the early days. That archive is a really important part of where YouTube can sit, because when you’re building up, it’s all for a purpose and meant to be loved forever and not just for a moment.

What impact has your artist development program Foundry had on your way you engage with new music?

It’s our first real interaction with a lot of artists and enables us to be with them from the beginning of their journey. Foundry is a combination of marketing support and grant funding for content, and cohorts have been selected throughout the years including people like Dua Lipa and Dave. In 2025 we worked with Odeal and shot one of his live performances at Village Underground, which just goes to show that when asked, these artists want to be ambitious and film a whole show to help fans who can’t be there experience that moment.

How does the YouTube team share and discover music? How do you encourage that spirit of discovery at your office?

It helps that our team are all passionate music fans, and we have such an exciting array of experts across the genres – we just talk about music all the time. We have a model of supporting artists through from development so we’re always keeping an eye on what’s happening, but we have a really tight communication in our team to make sure we’re all collectively monitoring different scenes and genres. We also go to a lot of shows together and discover artists through our own platforms and partners. It’s about people who live music and know the industry really well.

What are you looking for when you’re considering which artists YouTube should be backing and collaborating with?

Some of the artists we spoke about, they have a real strong identity and that’s what really stands out now. Brilliant songs will always be the most important thing, of course, but in terms of building up a narrative, it’s the artist who have a strong identity that stand out and the test of time. You can often tell that from quite early on, where you can see that talent and really amazing music, but tied in with a vision of who they are and where they want to sit. Authenticity is what cuts through for fans and it’s never been truer now in world of content abundance.

Tom Paul from Capitol Records recently told Billboard U.K. that Olivia was an example of how human artistry stands out in a world “increasingly shaped by AI.” What do you make of that assessment?

There’s a deep humanity to Olivia’s songs, and she’s always had a clear sense of who she is and it shines in everything she does. That’s what people gravitate to, and to be a successful artist it’s important to have that sense of human community that people can be a part of and and there’s a coherence to everything you do and feels recognisable. She’s a shining example of quality, authenticity, talent and hard work.

What’s your message to UK industry heading into 2026?

We want to be the best place for every music fan, and we want to be the place where fans fall in place for the longterm with your artist. So keep thinking about artist storytelling, because that deep long-term connection is so important. We see evidence that when a fan sees a music video they go on to consume more of that artist in the following weeks, so make sure that visual storytelling is the important part of an artist’s strategy.