Google continues to lock down YouTube features as it moves them behind the Premium subscription. First, it disabled background playback loopholes. Now it wants to charge you for song lyrics on YouTube Music.
Several posts on the r/YoutubeMusic subreddit show the YouTube Music UI with a warning – “You have X views remaining, unlock lyrics with Premium”, where X starts at 5 and counts down to zero each time you hit the Lyrics tab.
YouTube Music now requires a Premium subscription if you want to look at (more than a few) song lyrics
This has been in the works for a while now – it was in September when the first reports came out that some users were getting the “unlock lyrics with Premium” prompt. However, only a few users saw this – it seems that it was a trial run.
Now, many more users are seeing it, which suggests that testing is done and Google has adopted the new policy.
We’re not seeing official confirmation of this change yet, but in the case of background playback, it took a few days from the change being implemented to Google posting an official statement.
YouTube Music Premium costs $11 a month in the US, but you can get it as part of YouTube Premium for $14 a month (this also removes ads and enables background play on YouTube videos). In Europe, prices vary by country.
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