YouTube Music widely launches paywall feature for lyrics

2026-02-09 - 06:36

YouTube Music is now widely rolling out a paywall for lyrics after several months of testing. Accessing lyrics on the platform now requires either a YouTube Premium or a Music Premium subscription. Once this change is applied to your account, a new card will appear at the top of the middle tab in the “Now Playing” screen, displaying a message that says, “You have [x] views remaining” and “Unlock lyrics with Premium.” Users can view lyrics for five songs before needing to subscribe. As the limit is reached, only the first few lines of the song will be visible, while the rest will be blurred and unscrollable. Google has been trialing this feature for several months, and the lyrics paywall is now rolling out widely. YouTube Music Premium is available for $10.99 per month in the U.S., which offers ad-free listening, background playback, offline downloads, and AI features like Ask Music. The more extensive YouTube Premium plan costs $13.99 per month and includes all these benefits, expanding them to the main YouTube app as well. Google earlier this week revealed that it has more than 325 million paid subscriptions across its consumer services, with substantial growth in Google One and YouTube Premium. In 2025, revenue from YouTube ads and subscriptions surpassed $60 billion.