YouTube Music is making users pay for lyrics. Originally introduced in 2020 as a free feature, song lyrics now sit behind a paywall – as part of a YouTube Premium or Music Premium subscription.
As spotted by 9to5Google, in the latest update currently rolling out, the Lyrics tab on the Now Playing screen displays the warning message, “You have [x] views remaining. Unlock lyrics with Premium.”
Users get five free lyrics before a subscription is required. After that, users only see the first few lines, while the rest are blurred.
Google has been testing the change with a small subset of users for a few months already, and now it appears to be rolling out globally. Google has yet to confirm the change.
YouTube Music Premium costs $10.99 per month, and includes ad-free playback, offline downloads, and background listening. YouTube Premium, priced at $13.99, brings those benefits to the YouTube app.
It’s possible that Google is trying to claw back costs paid to third-party services like LyricFind and MusixMatch, which the app seems to be using to retrieve lyrics. Whether the strategy outlives previous attempts by streamers to make users pay extra for the feature remains to be seen.
Last year, Spotify briefly put lyrics behind a paywall, but it rolled back the move after a user backlash.
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