YouTube Music Rolling Out Premium Paywall for Song Lyrics
Source: MacRumors
YouTube Music Rolling Out Premium Paywall for Song Lyrics
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, the latest update (currently rolling out) shows a warning on the Lyrics tab of the Now Playing screen: “You have [x] views remaining. Unlock lyrics with Premium.”
- Users get five free lyric views before a subscription is required.
- After that, only the first few lines are visible; the rest are blurred.
Google has been testing the change with a small subset of users for a few months and now appears to be rolling it out globally. Google has not yet confirmed the change.
Pricing
- YouTube Music Premium – $10.99 / month (ad‑free playback, offline downloads, background listening).
- YouTube Premium – $13.99 / month (includes the same benefits for the YouTube app).
The shift may be an effort to recoup costs paid to third‑party lyric services such as LyricFind and MusixMatch, which the app uses to retrieve lyrics. Whether this strategy will persist, as previous attempts by streaming services to charge extra for lyrics have shown, remains to be seen.
Tag: YouTube Music
This article first appeared on MacRumors.com.