YouTube Wrapper App Musi Sues Apple Over ‘Abrupt’ and ‘Unreasonable’ App Store Removal
Musi is suing Apple for allegedly removing it from the App Store without cause. Photo Credit: James Yarema
Apple is facing a breach of contract lawsuit levied by YouTube wrapper app Musi, which says it was unjustly booted from the App Store.
Manitoba, Canada-based Musi submitted that straightforward complaint to a California federal court, after it was allegedly kicked off the App Store on September 24th. As the development followed an apparent years-running dispute with the Play Store owner Google, Musi never released on Android.
By Musi’s own description, though, it afforded users “enhanced functionality to interact with publicly available content on YouTube’s website through an augmentative interface.” Stated differently, Northeastern Global News in an April profile elaborated that “Musi pulls [tracks] from YouTube’s entire library,” allowing users to access “an even broader range of music, particularly live recordings, than on Spotify.”
As laid out in the same account, Musi incorporated “silent, full screen ads” that were “less intrusive than the ads that play between every few songs on Spotify’s free, ad-supported tier.” Of course, one needn’t stretch the imagination to see why the model didn’t sit right with Google/YouTube, the major labels (which had the platform in their crosshairs pre-removal), and others.
Furthermore, judging by some of the qualms voiced in the many Reddit posts penned by now-former Musi users, the app was also selling lifetime access to an ad-free tier. (On the usership front, we previously provided a look at Musi’s surprising reach.)
Returning to the lawsuit, Musi’s “sporadic dialogue with YouTube” is said to date back to 2015, during which time the plaintiff “repeatedly expressed its commitment to offer the Musi app in a way that fully complies with YouTube’s Terms of Service,” per the legal text.
Keeping the timetable in mind, in 2021, YouTube counsel allegedly accused Musi of violating the video-sharing giant’s terms by allegedly accessing YouTube’s non-public interfaces, using YouTube for a commercial purpose without authorization, and selling ads on pages where YouTube videos were the main draw.
Predictably, Musi says it refuted each of the claims, though “YouTube never responded.” A similar collection of allegations and another alleged non-response from YouTube purportedly arrived in March of 2023.
Fast forward to this past August, when the App Store team emailed Musi about a formal complaint, alleging intellectual property rights infringement, from YouTube’s legal team. Musi once again returned fire, failed to receive an immediate response from Apple, and then engaged in an evidently fruitless email exchange (complete with an alleged lack of concrete responses from Apple and Google/YouTube) until the aforementioned App Store removal in late September, the suit shows.
Among other things, the move was allegedly “unreasonable, lacked good cause, and violated Apple’s Development Agreement’s terms,” per the suit. “Apple’s decision has caused immediate and ongoing financial and reputational harm to Musi,” the app spelled out for good measure.
Besides damages, the plaintiff is seeking “a preliminary and permanent injunction to have the Musi app restored on the App Store platform.”
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