Spotify announced recently that they’re considering putting one of the most-loved user features behind a paywall — making it so only Premium subscribers can access. According to Billboard, the streaming company confirmed that as a test, they will be hiding the lyrics to songs from users in some areas who are not subscribed.
“At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests, some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning,” a company spokesperson told the publication. “In keeping with our standard practices, we’re currently testing this with a limited number of users in a pair of markets. We don’t have any further news to share at this time.”
Right now, the lyrics appear for most songs through the app, when users scroll up. Those in the free-with-advertisements tier were alerted of the potential paywall change coming, as people reportedly pointed it out on social media.
Even those subscribed to Premium don’t seem too pleased with the change. “Why would people have to pay for it when lyrics are frequently wrong, the sync is usually off by a line or two/not available, and many songs don’t even have lyrics shown,” one user asked.
Others jokingly pointed out that people can just google the lyrics to songs for free — defeating the point of trying to get more subscribers.
Continue scrolling for some more reactions to Spotify’s lyric paywall move.
greediest people ever omfg https://t.co/sibQ3qwOIp
— cora (@psycholov3rs) September 6, 2023
“if we make a better, competitive product, people will buy it!” turning into “forcing people to pay for basic features for our app to be usable when they used to have free access to them” is a great microcosm of capitalism https://t.co/G535TfVX3Y
— jon
(@jon_speaks_) September 6, 2023
So they want to make people pay to read lyrics but no one wants to fairly pay songwriters to write those lyrics?!
FOH. I hate it here. https://t.co/Bzmpsypkl4— Claude Kelly (@ClaudeKelly) September 6, 2023