The legal status of the free music streaming app Musi has long been unclear – but the matter may now be settled, thanks to a lawsuit the developer has filed against Apple.
Musi sourced its music from YouTube using a method it claims was perfectly legal, while parent company Google disagreed. When the two sides were unable to reach agreement, Apple pulled Musi from its App Store – a move the developer says lacked good cause …
The free music streaming app Musi
Musi launched back in 2016, and proved a big hint with teens in particular, as it provided completely free music streams without the audio ad interruptions you get on Spotify’s free tier.
By the beginning of this year, Musi was actually bigger than many of its rivals.
Musi is bigger than Pandora, Deezer, or Amazon Music, with Sensor Tower estimating that it’s hit more than 66 million downloads. Ad analytics company Pixalete estimates that it was the top-grossing iOS app in North America back in February.
The legality of the app has always been unclear
Whether the app was legitimate has never been clear.
Musi streamed its music from YouTube. The Google-owned company said that Musi violated its terms of service by doing this, while the service claimed it was effectively just acting as a web browser and therefore was doing nothing wrong.
Independent experts were unable to agree on the legal status of the app. YouTube finally complained to Apple, and the Cupertino company told Musi that it would need to resolve the dispute if it wanted to remain in the App Store.
A lawsuit against Apple may settle the matter
Apple pulled Musi from the App Store after it was unable to reach agreement with YouTube. The video service claimed that was because Musi ceased contact, but the developer says this isn’t true, and it can prove that it was in fact YouTube which stopped responding.
Top comment by Rayz2023
Mmm. 🤔
I don’t think Apple is under any obligation to offer any app on its own store.
The dev could try putting it in one of the EU stores.
Arstechnica reports that Musi has now sued Apple for improperly removing the app.
“Apple’s decision to abruptly and arbitrarily remove the Musi app from the App Store without any indication whatsoever from the Complainant as to how Musi’s app infringed Complainant’s intellectual property or violated its Terms of Service,” Musi’s complaint alleged, “was unreasonable, lacked good cause, and violated Apple’s Development Agreement’s terms.”
Those terms state that removal is only on the table if Apple “reasonably believes” an app infringes on another’s intellectual property rights, and Musi argued Apple had no basis to “reasonably” believe YouTube’s claims […]
The music-streaming app has asked for a permanent injunction immediately reinstating Musi in the App Store and stopping Apple from responding to third-party complaints by removing apps without any evidence of infringement.
It will now be up to a jury to decide whether Apple acted reasonably by removing Musi, which will at least indirectly determine the legal status of the app.
Musi isn’t the only free music streaming service to source its music from YouTube – it’s simply the best known. If the decision does go against the developer, it’s likely that this will leave YouTube and Apple playing whack-a-mole with replacements.
Photo by Arnav Singhal on Unsplash
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