YouTube Music is widening a change that moves full song lyrics behind its paid tiers, with more free listeners reporting that they now see only a handful of lyric screens before a Premium prompt blurs the rest. The Lyrics tab still appears for everyone, and the first lines of a track remain visible, but continued scrolling now requires an active YouTube Music Premium or YouTube Premium subscription.
What Is Changing With YouTube Music’s Lyrics Access
Users across regions say they’re limited to roughly five lyric views before the interface locks and surfaces an upgrade message. This appears to be a server-side rollout rather than a new app version, and behavior can vary slightly by account. The core experience is the same: a taste of the lyrics for discovery, then a paywall for full access.
Both YouTube Music Premium (ad-free music, background play, downloads) and the broader YouTube Premium plan (which also removes ads from standard YouTube videos) unlock the full lyrics experience. In the US, the sticker price for Music Premium is commonly $10.99 per month, while the YouTube Premium individual plan is typically $13.99, with pricing and bundles varying by market.
Why Google Might Be Paywalling Full Song Lyrics Now
Lyrics are not just a toggle in the UI; they’re a licensed, maintained dataset that often involves publishing rights and ingestion from partners such as Musixmatch and LyricFind. Hosting synced, scrollable text at massive scale adds cost and complexity, and paywalling that feature can both offset licensing and nudge free listeners toward paid plans.
The move also aligns with a broader subscription push. YouTube said it surpassed 100 million combined Music and Premium subscribers globally in 2024, signaling that add-on features tied to retention—offline downloads, background play, higher bitrates, and now lyrics—are central to its growth strategy. In an era where ad-blocking is common and music margins are tight, premium differentiation has become a core lever for platforms.
How YouTube Music’s Lyrics Policy Compares To Rivals
Spotify experimented with limiting lyrics for some free users in select markets, drawing swift backlash before access largely returned. Apple Music includes real-time lyrics for subscribers and does not run a permanent free tier. Amazon Music surfaces lyrics for many tracks across both ad-supported stations and paid plans, while Tidal and Deezer offer live lyrics and credits as part of their subscriptions.
In other words, most services treat lyrics as a standard part of the core music experience once you’re inside the ecosystem. YouTube Music’s approach is distinctive because it withholds complete lyrics specifically from its sizable free audience while using them as a carrot for conversion.
What The Lyrics Paywall Change Means For Listeners
For casual listeners who rely on lyrics to decipher verses, sing along, or explore translations, the new limit is a friction point. It’s also an accessibility question: on-screen text can be crucial for the hard of hearing, language learners, and anyone using lyrics as a discovery tool for unfamiliar genres. While official music videos on standard YouTube may feature captions, those are not a consistent substitute for dedicated, synced lyrics in the music app.
The shift comes after YouTube Music steadily improved its lyric features, including more widespread availability of synced lines and better alignment with official metadata. Paywalling that progress underscores the platform’s calculus: if users value the feature, they’ll pay; if not, the free tier still streams the music itself.
Your Options Now If You Want Full Lyrics In The App
If full lyrics matter to you, upgrading to YouTube Music Premium or YouTube Premium restores the uninterrupted experience and adds other perks like background play and offline listening. If you remain on the free tier, you can still glimpse the opening lines on the Lyrics tab and, in some cases, rely on captions within official music videos on standard YouTube—though coverage and accuracy vary widely by track.
As platforms chase subscription revenue and juggle licensing costs, this kind of paywalling is likely to continue surfacing around “nice-to-have” features. The open question is whether lyrics sit in that bucket—or whether, for enough listeners, they’re a make-or-break part of the modern music app experience.
