Free the Lyrics YouTube - DTNS 5202
Daily Tech News Show
Tom Merritt
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Plus, science says AI is good at brain scans, too good at making you more productive, and not great at helping you with your medical condition.
Starring Tom Merritt and Robb Dunewood
Show notes can be found here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, February 9th, |
| 0:07.0 | 2026. We tell you what you need to know. We give you some important context. We try to help you understand. |
| 0:12.0 | Today, why is YouTube putting song lyrics behind the paywall? |
| 0:17.0 | We'll make our best guess. I'm Tom Merritt. |
| 0:20.0 | And I'm not done with. |
| 0:21.6 | Let's start with what you need to know with the big story. |
| 0:23.6 | So yeah, I pick this as our big story today because it was kind of the only story I saw on all of the places where I look at news. |
| 0:35.6 | There were a lot of people picking different things as their top stories today, |
| 0:40.2 | but this showed up everywhere. |
| 0:41.8 | 9 to 5 Google noting that YouTube music's test of putting lyrics behind the paywall |
| 0:46.7 | appears to be rolling out to everyone now. |
| 0:49.4 | If and when it hits you as a free user, if you're paid user, you'll still see lyrics fine. But if you're a free user, you'll see a message at the top of the lyrics tab screen that says you have X number of views remaining, depending on how many times you've viewed lyrics. Unlock lyrics with premium. And then it tells you how to pay for premium and get rid of that barrier. Apparently you can view lyrics |
| 1:11.8 | five times before you have to pay. That's what nine to five Google says they found. If you want to |
| 1:16.4 | pay, YouTube music cost you $11 a month, or if you get YouTube premium, that's $14 a month, |
| 1:22.9 | and that not only includes YouTube music, but also other features like ad for YouTube. |
| 1:32.8 | This was the only tech story on Monday that wasn't about Mark German's Apple newsletter that showed up everywhere I looked. |
| 1:35.4 | Here's some of the things that I think contribute to this being, getting a lot of buzz. |
| 1:41.3 | Spotify started putting lyrics behind its paywall back in May 24, |
| 1:45.6 | uh, you may remember, but by July, it was backtracking. Uh, it first started by raising the number |
| 1:52.1 | of times you could view lyrics as a free user. Uh, then it just stopped displaying the limit. |
| 1:57.4 | And they never said anything, but it's believed to be either a very high limit |
| 2:01.9 | or non-existent. TechRadar notes that Spotify this week started offering basic lyrics for free |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tom Merritt, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Tom Merritt and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.