YouTube music is rolling out a significant change that affects users on its free, ad‑supported tier. A feature that was once freely accessible — and often used by listeners — is now being limited behind a paywall, meaning you may no longer enjoy it once you hit a view limit unless you upgrade to a paid subscription.

🎤 1. Full Song Lyrics Are Moving Behind a Premium Paywall

One of the most noticeable changes for free users is that song lyrics — which used to be fully available for everyone — are now being restricted. Previously, people with free accounts could tap the Lyrics button while playing a track and scroll through the full lyrics for no cost.

Now, full lyrics are limited to a small number of views per month on free accounts — often reported as around five full lyric views — after which the rest of the text becomes blurred or hidden, with only a few initial lines shown. To see the complete lyrics, users are prompted to subscribe to YouTube music Premium or the broader YouTube Premium plan.

💸 2. What Exactly Is Changing?

Here’s how the restriction works:

• 📌 Free users can see full lyrics for a limited number of songs per month.
• 📌 After exceeding that limit, the app blurs the rest of the lyrics and shows a message encouraging a subscription.
• 📌 To see all lyrics without limits, users must subscribe to YouTube music Premium (or YouTube Premium).

This feature used to be part of the core free experience on the platform and helped users sing along, learn lyrics, or simply enjoy deeper engagement with music.

📉 3. Why This Is a Big Deal for Free Users

For years, YouTube music was considered one of the more generous free music streaming services because it offered:

• Streamed a large music catalog (with ads)
• Full lyrics access for most songs
• Playlist and discovery features without paying

With lyrics now being limited, many free users feel like a valuable part of their experience is being taken away — leading to user dissatisfaction and online backlash.

📌 4. The Push Toward Paid Subscriptions

Experts say this change looks like a strategic move to convert free listeners into paying subscribers. Locking features like lyrics — which might seem minor but are still widely used — can nudge users toward subscribing to Premium plans to maintain the full experience.

This follows a broader trend among streaming platforms to reserve more perks for paying users, such as ad‑free listening, offline downloads, background playback, and better audio quality.

📊 5. Mixed Reports: Experiment or Permanent Change?

At least one tech outlet quotes Google saying the paywall might be part of an “experiment” tested on a subset of users. They claim the feature restriction isn’t yet confirmed as a final, global change, though many users are already reporting the restriction widely.

Still, reports from multiple sources indicate the lyrics paywall is rolling out broadly, not just as a tiny test, which suggests the change could stick.

📍 6. How YouTube music Premium Differs

If you upgrade to Premium, you get:

• ✨ Unlimited access to full lyrics
• 🚫 Ad‑free listening
• 📥 Offline downloads
• 🔊 Background play on mobile

For many users who value lyrics, at‑home listening, or uninterrupted playback, these perks may now feel more necessary than before.

📌 7. Alternatives for Free music Lovers

If you don’t want to pay, you could consider other music apps that still offer lyrics and basic streaming for free — though feature sets vary. Always check the roadmap, as other platforms sometimes change access too.

Conclusion

While YouTube music still offers a robust free tier, the removal of unlimited, full song lyrics represents a clear shift in strategy — placing a formerly free feature behind a paywall in an effort to encourage more users to upgrade. Whether this change will stay or evolve depends on user feedback and how aggressively YouTube rolls it out globally.

 

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