If you use YouTube Music for free, unfortunately, Google has decided to lock one of its best features behind a paywall.
The feature in question is lyrics, which, as the name suggests, lets users view the full lyrics of the song they’re listening to in the app. It first launched in 2020 and, until recently, was available to all users at no extra cost while streaming songs on YouTube Music.
However, back in September, Google quietly began testing a change that put lyrics behind a paywall. According to 9to5Google, that restriction has started rolling out much more widely over the past few days, affecting many more users. Reports about this on Reddit have also started popping up.
While lyrics are now largely locked behind a paywall on YouTube Music, free users aren’t completely shut out. Free users can now view the lyrics of only five songs per month, and anything beyond that requires a YouTube Music subscription, which starts at $11 a month. When this restriction affects your free YouTube Music account, you’ll see a bar above the lyrics showing how many free viewings you have left, along with an option to “Unlock lyrics with Premium.”
Why is YouTube Music doing this?
Spotify still offers lyrics for free…
There are a lot of things in this world that drive me crazy, and features that were free for years suddenly being locked behind a paywall is on that list. YouTube Music has now done exactly that by putting lyrics that have been free for five years behind a subscription paywall.
Google, which owns YouTube Music, hasn’t officially explained why it’s making this change. That said, there’s been speculation about the reasoning. One likely explanation is that YouTube Music relies on services like LyricFind and MusixMatch to source and display song lyrics in the app, which presumably come with costs. To help offset those costs, Google may have decided to lock lyrics behind a paywall (via Android Authority).
It’s also worth noting that while YouTube Music is now locking lyrics behind a paywall, Spotify, one of its biggest competitors, still offers lyrics for free. Spotify actually tested putting lyrics behind a paywall in 2024, but after facing significant backlash, it backed off and never rolled it out fully. Apparently, Google missed that memo.
I’ll admit that YouTube Music still offers solid value, especially since it’s bundled with YouTube Premium. Still, the fact that song lyrics are no longer free feels like a silly decision. Rather than convincing more users to subscribe, it could end up pushing people toward another platform, like Spotify.
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