What you need to know
- YouTube Music users had a rude awakening over the weekend, as they report the service’s lyrics have moved behind a red, Premium paywall.
- Now, free-tier users are given a banner that reportedly gives them five chances to view song lyrics before their limit is reached and they’re gone.
- Spotify attempted to do the same years ago, but user backlash pushed it to return lyrics to all users.
YouTube’s music service is leaving users in disbelief after a report claims the company’s locking away a nice feature behind a paywall.
Over the weekend, a user reported a change on the YouTube Music subreddit, stating that the service’s lyrics are a no-show for free-tier users (via GSMArena). The user states that lyrics are “gone for non-premium users.” Their provided screenshot shows off the warning free-tier users now receive when, seemingly, going past their allotted lyric limit.
The screenshot shows a banner that appears when attempting to view a song’s lyrics beyond your limit. It states, “You have 0 views remaining. Unlock lyrics with Premium.”
More and more user reports have appeared on the subreddit, many of them voicing displeasure with the sudden change. This particular report shows their banner reading “3 views remaining,” though GSMArena noticed that the number starts at five before dwindling. By that logic, it looks like free-tier users can only view lyrics for five songs before they’re gone.
What’s not clear is when this refreshes, so users can view a track’s lyrics again. This change appears quite recent, as many reports started appearing around this past weekend. The publication highlights that YouTube Music tested this change late last year, and this seems to be the fruit of that test run.
Changes, changes
YouTube Music reportedly started a limited test for “real-time lyric translations” last year. This was something that rolled out to a small group of Premium subscribers. The feature would work on your device (in the app) to translate a song’s lyrics to your preferred language. It’s a convenient and welcome feature for users wanting to expand their musical horizon.
Premium subscribers were given a “Translate” button when viewing lyrics during the test to try it out. Funnily enough, while YouTube Music has tried to take a page out of Spotify’s book for its AI DJ, it’s done a complete reverse on lyrics. It’s competition made lyrics available for offline downloads and brought lyric “previews” to users globally.
Spotify attempted to guard lyrics behind its Premium paywall years ago, but that quickly backfired, and the service returned them to all users.
Android Central’s Take
This change is a spicy one, for more reasons than one. It’s the big 2026, and it seems weird to begin locking features as small as lyrics behind a paywall. Hell, lyrics are available for subscribers and free-tier users on Pandora. More than that, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, reported $400 billion in earnings in Q4 2025. Right now, there’s an uproar on Reddit about the change, with users standing on both sides of the line. It’s not clear if there are enough raised voices to have the change reverted, as YouTube Music will likely make a decision that’s in its own “best interests.”
