A great YouTube Music feature now requires a subscription. If you like to sing, you'll miss it

The popular feature of displaying song lyrics in the YouTube Music app will no longer be available to everyone. After several months of testing, Google has begun to widely implement a change that locks song lyrics behind a Premium subscription. The news was reported by 9to5Google. So, if you like to sing and don’t want to subscribe to the service, you’ll have to use other sources to find lyrics.

Five Views and That’s It

Non-subscribers will now see a notification in the player saying “You have X views remaining” along with a prompt to subscribe. After exhausting five free views, the lyrics will blur, and only the first few lines will be displayed. The rest will remain unreadable and non-scrollable.

In the Czech Republic, a YouTube Music Premium subscription costs 169 CZK per month (a more advantageous family and student plan is also available). It includes ad-free playback, background listening, offline downloads, and now also access to AI features including Ask Music. The broader YouTube Premium package, which removes ads from the YouTube video platform as well, costs 219 CZK per month.

Google recently announced that it has over 325 million paid subscribers across its services, reminds 9to5Google. Limiting song lyrics is likely another step to increase this number.

What do you think of this change?

Source: 9to5Google