If you thought Spotify’s freemium model was weak before, just know that it could always get worse. The streamer’s latest change proves that. Spotify wants those freeloading customers to pony up for access to the platform’s lyrics feature according to Android Authority who first noticed the changes.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. For one, Spotify has been stripping the freemium model for years, rendering the final product almost unusable. And two, it “told” us as much when it first began experimenting with the idea of paywalling lyrics back in September last year. We were lucky enough to escape their wrath then, but now it appears as though the change is rolling out widely.
Maybe YouTube Music isn’t that bad…
Stuff are die-hard Premium users, so the recent change wasn’t immediately noticeable. It doesn’t help that the Premium benefits page doesn’t yet list ‘lyrics’ as a feature under the R65/m fee, nor that Spotify has mentioned the new rules in any official capacity. We whipped up a brand-new account to test it for ourselves. We wish we hadn’t.
Unfortunately, the rumours are true. Lyrics are gone. That goes for all of Spotify’s mediums — TV, mobile and desktop. Attempting to load lyrics on mobile and desktop simply throws up a “Couldn’t load lyrics for this song. Try again later” error message. The button to load them on the TV is just… gone. We weren’t, however, prompted to upgrade to Premium, as several Redditors have noted in the past few days (thanks Android Authority).
Read More: Spotify’s lossless audio steaming could finally see light as a ‘Music Pro’ add-on
All that leads us to believe Spotify is in the midst of removing the feature before it delivers the final blow, officially speaking. Judging by another Reddit post, which mentions that “There’s a monthly limit on lyrics,” Spotify could be working on limiting the feature rather than deleting it entirely for free users. There’s no word, however, on what a ‘limit’ for accessing lyrics would be.
We expect Spotify to start ironing out all these kinks over the coming days, accompanied by a more comprehensive announcement explaining how the feature will work in the future. If this was the last straw you needed as a free user, YouTube Music is right there. Just sayin’.