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YouTube Music is testing a new paywall that restricts how many times free users can view song lyrics.
The move, which began as a limited trial in late 2025, has expanded significantly this month, leaving many ad-supported listeners unable to follow along with their favourite tracks.
Users on the platform’s free tier have reported seeing a new warning banner in the lyrics tab stating they have a limited number of views remaining.
Once a user hits the cap, reportedly set at five views per month, the app blurs out the majority of the text, showing only the first two lines of a song. A prompt then appears, encouraging the listener to “Unlock lyrics with Premium” to restore access.
The experiment marks another step in Google’s effort to drive subscriptions for YouTube Premium, which currently costs $13.99 per month.
While lyrics have been a staple free feature for years, they are often sourced from third-party providers like Musixmatch, which charge platforms based on usage. By gating the feature, Google appears to be looking for ways to offset these licensing costs.
YouTube has defended the move as a standard part of its development process. An official spokesperson stated:
“We are running an experiment with a small percentage of ad-supported users that may impact their ability to access the lyrics feature repeatedly. We often run experiments on YouTube Music to better inform our decisions around feature improvements. The majority of our global users will not see any changes to the lyrics feature.”
The decision follows a similar, short-lived attempt by Spotify to paywall lyrics in 2024. That trial was eventually scrapped following a fierce backlash from users. Critics of the YouTube test have called it “enshittification,” arguing that the platform is removing basic functionality to coerce users into paid plans rather than adding new value to the service.
Despite the friction, Google’s strategy of tightening the belt on free accounts appears to be working financially. The company recently reported that YouTube generated $60 billion in annual revenue from ads and subscriptions, a $10 billion increase over the previous year.
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