In the beginning, Spotify had a song lyrics which allowed all users to read the songs while listening to them. This function disappeared, and did not exist for many years until, finally, in 2020, thanks to MusicMatch, the letters returned to the platform in style. However, today we bring bad news in this regard.
At the end of 2023, Spotify He began to experience a change, about which he had not made any statements, in relation to the lyrics of the songs. Based on an A/B experiment (i.e. only some users), the lyrics feature disappeared for users chosen from the free plan.
Now we know the reason for this experiment.
Goodbye to lyrics for Spotify Free
For a few days now, many users of the Spotify free plan They cannot access the lyrics of the songs. Although the icon continues to appear within the client, when you click on it, a message appears, like the following one, indicating that, to enjoy the lyrics, you have to pay.
At the moment, this restriction only applies to Spotify Free users in the United States, but it will surely apply to other countries, such as Spain, very soon. Although we don’t like it, it is clear that this is a very smart move on the part of the company, since what it is looking for is to irritate users, eliminating interesting functions, and playing more ads, to encourage them to check out and subscribe. to the Premium plan.
New Premium plans in sight?
It is very likely that this is not the only business change we see in the company. It is very likely that this year we will see a new price for the current plan, and even different Premium plans. For example, the company is working on the ultra-high-quality audio feature, which, of course, will have an extra cost. Also, the platform’s focus on audiobooks will make the service more expensive, or users will have to pay an extra if they want to access this service.
Following the market trend, it would not be unreasonable to think of a “cheap” plan with ads, but without the limitations of the Free plan. Be that as it may, we will have news about it soon.
Spotify, the best, but the most limited
If you don’t know the free Spotify plan, it allows you to listen to streaming music, without going to the checkout, but assuming some limitations. The clearest is advertising, reproducing one (or two) banners every certain number of reproductions. The number of skips the songs can take is also limited to 6 for each hour of music, and it forces them to be played in random order. In addition, now it does not allow you to see the lyrics of the songs. Broadly speaking, it’s like listening to the radio.
Other platforms are not as restrictive with non-paying users. For example, Youtube music It allows you to skip all the songs you want, it includes the lyrics of the songs, the ads can be skipped and it does not force us to listen to music in random order. Amazon Prime Music It is not as restrictive as Spotify, although the catalog is not as extensive as the other two alternatives if you do not pay for Unlimited.
