Popular iOS music streaming app Musi may be fighting a losing battle against YouTube’s efforts to crack down on API abuse.
In 2023, YouTube began targeting apps that block ads on YouTube for its free users, sending pop-ups to those users asking them to disable their ad blockers. Now, they appear to be gray-market API wrapper apps—apps that serve YouTube content and run their own ads on the side. Musi displays ads to teens looking for “free YouTube Premium” features like background music.
Users have to watch ads when they open the Musi app and then can stream audio without interruption. Video ads play silently in the app while the music continues, while banner ads appear at the bottom of the screen. If users are bothered by the ads, they can pay Musi’s developers a one-time fee of $5.99 to go ad-free. The only problem with this is that Musi does not license the music it offers and companies like Vevo have stated that they will take action against their content appearing on the app.
Digital music news Last week, an article was published about the app, with industry insiders calling it a “parasitic threat” to the current music streaming model. The increased awareness of how teens and young people are using Musi could cause some problems for the app’s developers. Over the last week, reports of problems with music streaming within the app have been piling up on the subreddit. In a post titled “Musi seems to be having issues,” we can see the exact error message.
“Musi was unable to play this track – please sign in to confirm you are not a bot,” is the error message returned. Users say that when they log into YouTube through the Musi app, the login fails and they are unable to stream music due to the error message. An official Reddit support account named “musi_app_support” suggests users experiencing the “bot error” sign in to a VPN to avoid streaming issues. Several people are complaining and showing the same error – could this mean YouTube is taking action against Musi?
While Musi is in a gray area, both the YouTube API Terms of Service and iOS Terms of Service include provisions for dealing with Musi. The YouTube API Terms of Service state that developers agree not to use the YouTube API for “selling advertising, sponsorships or promotions on any API Client page that contains YouTube audiovisual content, unless other non-YouTube content appears on the same page and is of sufficient value to serve as the basis for such sales” without prior written permission.
Musi’s only content comes from YouTube and it displays banner ads on those pages, suggesting it violates this provision in the YouTube API Terms of Service. The iOS Terms of Service for developers states: “Apps must not facilitate illegal file sharing or provide the ability to store, convert, or download media from third-party sources without explicit permission from those sources. Streaming audio/video content may also violate the Terms of Service, so be sure to check before your app accesses these services.”
