YouTube Music has started sliding its lyrics feature behind a paywall, and if you’re on the free tier, your sing-along days just got numbered.

Non-Premium users now get five lyric views before the karaoke comes to an end. After that? You’ll either need to subscribe or settle for a tease, the first few lines visible, the rest blurred out like classified documents.

It’s not exactly a shock. Rumblings about this shift have been floating around for months. Still, it stings a little. Lyrics have become one of those quiet essentials of streaming culture, whether you’re decoding a Phoebe Bridgers verse or double-checking what Future actually just said.

Spotify tried something similar back in 2024, limiting lyrics for free users, and the backlash was loud enough to make them backpedal. Reddit threads flared up, TikToks piled on, and Spotify ultimately reversed course. But YouTube isn’t Spotify — and Google doesn’t seem particularly worried about the noise.

Because here’s the thing: the money’s flowing. YouTube reportedly pulled in over $60 billion last year from ads and subscriptions. Google also says it now has more than 325 million paid subscriptions across its consumer services, with strong growth in Google One and YouTube Premium, though it’s keeping the exact breakdown per service close to the vest.

From a business angle, the move tracks. As 9to5Google notes, YouTube Music licenses its lyrics from third-party providers. That means Google pays for them. And when you’re shelling out for something, you start looking for ways to make it pull its weight.

Some users have floated the obvious 2026 question: why not just use AI to generate lyrics and skip the licensing fees? But accuracy matters, especially when you’re dealing with artists’ words. Mess up a lyric and you’re not just wrong, you’re rewriting someone’s work. Keeping officially licensed, accurate lyrics probably helps justify putting them behind a subscription wall in the first place.

If you’re considering the jump, YouTube Music Premium runs $10.99 a month in the U.S., which gets you ad-free listening, background play, downloads, and access to its AI features. YouTube Premium, at $13.99 a month, folds in all of that across the main YouTube app too.