Before You Subscribe to Musixmatch Pro: A Warning for Artists & Industry Professionals

Musixmatch is currently the exclusive provider of synced lyrics to Spotify and a dominant player in the lyrics infrastructure for DSPs worldwide. However, recent changes to their platform, pricing model, and access policies raise critical concerns for anyone considering subscribing to Musixmatch Pro — particularly managers, labels, and independent artists responsible for multiple catalogs.

This article presents a fact-based overview of platform behavior and legal developments as of 2025, including firsthand case experience and publicly available court filings, to help inform professionals evaluating whether to use the service.

1. Lyrics Are Locked When a Song Features Another Artist

Musixmatch now blocks users from editing lyrics for any song that includes a featured artist unless the account is upgraded to a paid tier. According to their support documentation:

“Direct lyric edits to songs with featured artists are restricted… If you are a Free User, you can upgrade to a Premium subscription… By purchasing a Musixmatch Pro Plan, you will gain the ability to edit and add lyrics to featured songs.”
(Musixmatch Support, October 2025)

This policy affects a wide range of common release formats — including co-productions, collaborations, and featured vocal appearances. Even if the main artist owns 100% of the rights and handles distribution, lyric access is restricted.

In multiple cases, songs previously released and synced were locked again upon inclusion in a full-length album due to the presence of featured credits.

2. No Access to Support and a History of Platform Failures

Musixmatch offers no working support contact, no human escalation process, and no way for users to resolve issues outside of upgrading to a paid plan. The platform relies entirely on automated dropdown forms and a chatbot that restricts the user's ability to describe or escalate problems.

Real-world examples include:

• Verified artist accounts repeatedly flagged for ID verification without resolution

• Incomplete artist catalogs inside user dashboards despite repeated manual corrections

• Non-functional navigation on mobile, where key actions such as “create free artist account” buttons do not work

• No replies to email outreach, with multiple support requests sent since June 2025 receiving no response

Some clients who paid for Musixmatch Pro have still not received adequate assistance, resolution, or explanation.

The platform has also exhibited long-term bugs that remain unresolved — issues that have been reported by teams for years, with no visible improvement.

3. Forced Pricing Model, Poor Transition Experience, and Misleading Communication

In early 2025, Musixmatch implemented a major change in how industry professionals access its services. The platform eliminated the ability for artist managers to oversee multiple artists under one account unless they subscribed to a new “Pro” plan. The pricing tiers offered were:

• $324.50/year for up to 10 artists

• $499.50/year for up to 20 artists

• $1,299/year for up to 50 artists

These rates were advertised as limited-time “discounted prices” off regular fees — but even with the discounts, the costs were disproportionately high for the basic functionality required (namely, submitting and editing lyrics). The bundled features — such as lyric video tools and editorial curation — were neither optional nor relevant to many users.

The company framed this change as a time-sensitive ultimatum: pay immediately or lose access to your artist accounts. In practice, it felt coercive — a demand to pay for tools that were previously available for free or low-cost, under the threat of losing account control.

Musixmatch simultaneously claimed that artists could create individual free accounts as an alternative. However, during the transition process:

• Some users were still forced into paid signup flows, despite the free option being advertised.

• The mobile interface made it impossible to complete critical steps, such as account creation or verification.

• Artist accounts that were supposedly “migrated” remained incomplete or broken.

• Instructions provided were contradictory or led to system dead ends.

For many teams, the outcome was the same: pay to proceed, or stop using the platform entirely. Even those who attempted to comply with the free-tier structure found themselves in confusing, nonfunctional, or error-prone environments.

4. Ongoing Antitrust Case and Market Exclusivity Concerns

On May 30, 2025, LyricFind filed a lawsuit against Musixmatch and its parent company, TPG, in U.S. District Court. The filing alleges:

“TPG’s and Musixmatch’s goal was simple: make sure that Spotify, and other DSPs, have no choice but to obtain Lyric Data Services and Lyric Rights Licensing from Musixmatch despite its higher fees—a plainly anticompetitive result.”

The lawsuit accuses Musixmatch of attempting to buy LyricFind and, when that failed, entering into exclusive contracts with Warner Chappell Music and others in a “buy or bury” strategy that undermines competition.

In September 2025, the court denied Musixmatch’s motion to dismiss most of LyricFind’s claims, allowing the case to proceed to discovery. Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley stated:

“LyricFind plausibly alleges Musixmatch entered an exclusive agreement causing injury of the type antitrust laws are intended to prevent and substantially foreclosing competition.”

While Musixmatch denies wrongdoing and has described the lawsuit as meritless, the legal challenge now moving forward casts significant doubt on the company’s competitive integrity — particularly in light of its exclusive integration with Spotify and lack of visible alternatives for independent artists or distributors.

Final Note

This article presents a factual account of recent policy changes, platform failures, and ongoing legal challenges surrounding Musixmatch. The company continues to impose restrictive access policies, penalize collaboration, and offer no reliable support — even to paying users.

Despite years of reported issues from artists and managers, the platform has made little visible effort to improve its infrastructure or accountability. For those considering Musixmatch Pro, the evidence speaks for itself.

Given Musixmatch’s exclusive integration with Spotify and continued deterioration in platform quality and user experience, we urge Spotify and other digital service providers to reconsider their reliance on a single lyric partner. Artists deserve options — and a service that works.

Whether to engage with Musixmatch is a decision every artist, manager, and label must make individually.

This platform has chosen its model. The industry should decide whether to continue supporting it.