Musi is suing Apple over its decision to remove the free music streaming app from the App Store. The lawsuit confirms previous speculation that it was actually a complaint from YouTube that resulted in the app being taken down. However, Musi says that complaint is “unsubstantiated” and YouTube won’t provide any more information, which - it adds - are both reasons why Apple shouldn’t have blocked its app.
Apple told Musi in August that it had received the complaint about its app, which allowed people to stream music for free by pulling tracks from YouTube. The complaint from YouTube said that Musi “infringes its intellectual property rights” and was “violating YouTube terms of service”, according to the lawsuit.
“The nature of complainant’s intellectual property was not described”, it adds, “and the specific sections of complainant’s terms of service allegedly violated by the Musi app were not named or cited”.
YouTube has directly contacted Musi before, in 2021 and 2023, the lawsuit reveals. On both occasions, Musi claims, it answered questions and addressed concerns raised by YouTube, which then failed to respond to their communications. YouTube has been similarly unresponsive to communications sent by Musi’s lawyers since the complaint was filed with Apple.
Musi says it explained to Apple twice that its communications to YouTube “had gone unanswered” and “reiterated that complainant had failed to provide any relevant information regarding its complaint”.
That didn’t achieve much, with Apple “ignoring Musi’s communications altogether” and instead sending a message declaring, “your app will be removed from the App Store on the basis of intellectual property infringement”, with the app being removed shortly after.
The decision by Apple to “abruptly and arbitrarily remove the Musi app from the App Store without any indication whatsoever” about how Musi was infringing YouTube’s IP or violating its terms of service was “unreasonable, lacked good cause and violated Apple’s developer agreement’s terms”, the lawsuit concludes.
For the music industry’s anti-piracy police, the removal of Musi from the App Store is a welcome development, as is YouTube’s intervention. Musi says its app “provides users with enhanced functionality to interact with publicly available content on YouTube’s website through an augmentative interface”. However, many in the music industry see Musi as an unlicensed streaming service, even though technically the music is actually streamed from the licensed YouTube platform.
Critics in the industry point out that Musi’s use of YouTube is not as simple as playing YouTube videos through its app - it also silences YouTube ads and displays its own banner ads within the app, offering to remove the ads for a fee. Those banner ads were the subject of earlier legal action by Musi, when it sued an ad network in October 2019 for withholding payment for advertising, only for the ad network to countersue, claiming that Musi was operating a fraudulent business.
There are a few different legal arguments the music industry can use against Musi. First, that the app is communicating music to the public, even though Musi doesn’t actually host any music files itself, which would need a licence. Alternatively, Musi is circumventing YouTube’s technical protection measures, which is prohibited by the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Or, maybe simpler than all that, it could be argued that Musi violates YouTube’s terms of service. The music industry has long wished that YouTube itself would be more proactive in going after apps and websites that pull content from its platform in one way or another. Which is why YouTube’s recent move to get Musi removed from Apple’s App Store will be welcomed.
Referencing its earlier run ins with YouTube, Musi says in its lawsuit that lawyers from the Google video site expressed concerns in 2021 that its app “accessed and used YouTube’s non-public interfaces”, “used the service for a commercial use” and “violated YouTube’s prohibition on the sale of advertising ‘on any page of any website or application that only contains content from the service or where content from the service is the primary basis for such sales’”.
However, it says, it “addressed these concerns” by explaining to YouTube’s legal team that “at no point does the Musi app access YouTube’s non-public interfaces” and “the Musi app merely allows users to access YouTube’s publicly available website through a functional interface and, thus, does not use YouTube in a commercial way”.
Plus, “the Musi app does not sell advertising on any page that only contains content from YouTube or where such content is the primary basis for such sales”. YouTube never responded, it says, and the Musi app continued to operate unhindered until August’s complaint.
Which is why it reckons much more detail should have been provided with that complaint, and Apple should have insisted that information was supplied by YouTube before removing the Musi app.