Musi, a free music-streaming app only available on iPhone, sued Apple last week, arguing that Apple breached Musi’s developer agreement by abruptly removing the app from its App Store for no good reason.
According to Musi, Apple decided to remove Musi from the App Store based on allegedly “unsubstantiated” claims from YouTube that Musi was infringing on YouTube’s intellectual property. The removal came, Musi alleged, based on a five-word complaint from YouTube that simply said Musi was “violating YouTube terms of service”—without ever explaining how. And YouTube also lied to Apple, Musi’s complaint said, by claiming that Musi neglected to respond to YouTube’s efforts to settle the dispute outside the App Store when Musi allegedly showed evidence that the opposite was true.
For years, Musi users have wondered if the service was legal, Wired reported in a May deep dive into the controversial app. Musi launched in 2016, providing a free, stripped-down service like Spotify by displaying YouTube and other publicly available content while running Musi’s own ads.
Musi’s curious ad model has led some users to question if artists were being paid for Musi streams. Reassuring 66 million users who downloaded the app before its removal from the App Store, Musi has long maintained that artists get paid for Musi streams and that the app is committed to complying with YouTube’s terms of service, Wired reported.
In its complaint, Musi fully admits that its app’s streams come from “publicly available content on YouTube’s website.” But rather than relying on YouTube’s Application Programming Interface (API) to make the content available to Musi users—which potentially could violate YouTube’s terms of service—Musi claims that it designed its own “augmentative interface.” That interface, Musi said, does not “store, process, or transmit YouTube videos” and instead “plays or displays content based on the user’s own interactions with YouTube and enhances the user experience via Musi’s proprietary technology.”
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