YouTube Music now wants you to pay for seeing lyrics
What's the story
YouTube Music has started restricting access to full song lyrics, making them available only to paid subscribers. The change comes after months of testing and is now being rolled out globally. Under the new policy, free users can only view lyrics for up to five songs before hitting a paywall. After that, only partial song lyrics are visible with the rest blurred out and unscrollable.
Alert
Notification alerts users about remaining views
On the Now Playing screen, a notification alerts users about their remaining free lyric views and prompts them to "Unlock lyrics with Premium." The feature is applicable for both YouTube Music Premium and YouTube Premium subscribers. In the US, a subscription to YouTube Music Premium costs $10.99/month while YouTube Premium, which offers similar benefits on the main app, costs $13.99 every month.
Usage
Google has over 325M paid subscriptions globally
Google has been testing this paywall for months, but the global rollout indicates that it is now a permanent change. The move aligns YouTube Music with other streaming services that consider lyrics as a premium feature instead of a basic one. Google's recent announcement revealed it has more than 325 million paid subscribers across its consumer services, including YouTube Premium and Google One.