As of this year, YouTube is old enough to drink in the US (21). What started as a place to put your class project and also a whole lot of pirated TV episodes is now a 30-billion-dollar moneyspinner for owner Google. Google wants you to pay $14 a month for YouTube Premium, and it’ll kneecap the free experience in every way possible to achieve that. The latest victim is song lyrics.
Reddit users report that the YouTube Music mobile app is now demanding users upgrade to a Premium or Music Premium ($11) subscription in order to access the Lyrics tab, with only a few “views” available before the feature gets blurred out. I’d test it myself… but the Android app automatically gave me a free preview of Music Premium when I downloaded it. (Always Be Closing, I suppose.)
Lyrics do not appear to be hidden for my non-premium account on the YouTube Music web interface, for songs that feature them. But many lyrics on the platform are supplied by users, either directly or crawled from sources on the web. That might sting especially hard for users, who might need to pay to access information that’s easy enough to find in a browser tab. Android Authority reports that Google has been testing this paywall for a while, but that competitors like Spotify have backed off locking lyrics behind a paid account.
Google is trying to force users to upgrade in other ways. Android users who wanted access to YouTube background audio without paying had a fairly simple workaround: Load up the video in a third-party browser like Firefox. With basic web video capabilities not hobbled by Google’s monetary interests, they could then switch to another app or turn their screen off and listen to the audio, something that the mobile version of Chrome and the free version of the YouTube app do not offer.
YouTube has reportedly sabotaged this basic functionality, as many alternative browsers can no longer continue a YouTube video tab in the background. Google and umbrella corporation Alphabet seem to be intensifying its efforts to annoy and cajole free users into paying up. This, even as the platform itself chokes under algorithmic strains, don’t-call-it-censorship, and mountains of “AI” slop, much of it provided by Google itself.
Incidentally, there are still ways around the background audio issue, at least on Android.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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