YouTube Music has initiated a significant change, implementing a paywall for lyrics that requires a subscription to either YouTube Premium or Music Premium. Users will see a notification indicating the number of views they have remaining, with access to full lyrics limited after five free views. This rollout is occurring globally after several months of testing.
To access the complete lyrics, subscribers must pay $10.99 per month for YouTube Music Premium, which offers features such as ad-free playback and offline downloads. YouTube Premium, which includes similar benefits for the YouTube app, is priced at $13.99. As of earlier this week, Google announced it has surpassed 325 million paid subscriptions across its services.
In 2025, revenue from ads and subscriptions on YouTube was reported to exceed $60 billion. The new lyric feature aligns with YouTube Music's ongoing enhancements, including AI-generated backgrounds and synchronization of music queues across multiple platforms.