Google is increasingly tightening its policies for free users of YouTube Music by expanding a test that limits access to song lyrics unless users subscribe to its premium service. Traditionally, YouTube Music's mobile app has provided song lyrics to all users. However, recent changes have introduced a paywall, limiting how many times users without a subscription can view lyrics.
The new restriction, identified by 9to5Google, reveals that free account users can only view lyrics a limited number of times before the app prompts them to consider a subscription. Users currently receive five free lyric views, according to reports, before they are asked to upgrade. Despite this development, Google has not officially announced the inclusion of this limitation as a feature of its Premium subscription, and the company's support page omits any mention of it.
Google informed Ars Technica that they have not finalized the terms of this feature, and the experiment includes variable free lyric views across different test scenarios. They added that this is currently an 'experiment' that has grown significantly in scope recently, yet assured that 'the vast majority' of users still maintain free access to lyrics.
YouTube provided a statement detailing the current situation, saying, '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.'