YouTube Music puts lyrics behind Premium paywall in global rollout

• YouTube Music now restricts full song lyrics to paid subscribers worldwide
• Users get five free lyric views before needing YouTube Premium or Music Premium
• Only partial lyrics are shown after free views are used up

YouTube Music appears to be widely enforcing a Premium paywall for lyrics, ending a feature that many users had long taken for granted. After several months of testing, the restriction is now rolling out to accounts around the world.

When the change hits an account, the Lyrics tab on the Now Playing screen gains a new card at the top. It warns users how many free lyric views they have left and prompts them to “Unlock lyrics with Premium.” Google allows five free lyric views before the paywall fully kicks in.

Once those views are used up, the experience becomes sharply limited. Only the first few lines of a song’s lyrics remain visible, while the rest are blurred out and cannot be scrolled. Accessing full lyrics requires either a YouTube Music Premium or YouTube Premium subscription.

Google has been quietly experimenting with this approach for months, but the scale of the rollout suggests it is now a permanent change rather than a test. The move brings YouTube Music closer to other subscription services that increasingly treat lyrics as a paid feature rather than a basic one.

In the US, YouTube Music Premium costs $10.99 per month and includes ad-free playback, background listening, offline downloads, and AI-powered tools such as Ask Music. YouTube Premium costs $13.99 per month and extends those benefits to the main YouTube app, including ad-free video playback.

The timing is notable. Earlier this week, Google revealed it now has more than 325 million paid subscriptions across its consumer services, driven largely by YouTube Premium and Google One. In 2025 alone, YouTube generated over $60 billion in revenue from advertising and subscriptions combined.