Musi says evidence shows Apple conspired with music industry on App Store ban

For millions of music fans, the most controversial app ban of the past year was not the brief TikTok outage but the ongoing delisting of Musi from Apple's App Store.

Those users are holding out hope that Musi can defeat Apple in court and soon be reinstated. However, rather than coming to any sort of resolution, that court fight has intensified over the past month, with both sides now seeking sanctions, TorrentFreak reported.

Musi is a free app that lets users stream music from YouTube without interruptions, only playing ads when the app is initially opened. It was removed from the App Store in September 2024 after a YouTube complaint, but it maintains a deeply loyal fan base who swear it's better than alternatives like Spotify. Those fans who still have the app installed on their iPhones can continue to use the service, but if they lose access to the app (by updating their phones) or are first-time users, it is currently unavailable for download, to the dismay of many fans who complain daily on Reddit.

For Musi, the App Store removal came as an existential threat, prompting a lawsuit after Musi's attempts to work out the dispute with Apple outside of court failed. The music-streaming app has alleged that the Apple ban did not come at YouTube's request but at the request of Apple's apparent music industry friends who allegedly asked Apple to find a way to get the app removed—prompting Apple to push YouTube to re-open a supposedly resolved complaint.

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In a court filing, Apple claimed that this "conspiracy theory," as well as other "baseless" claims, were "false and misleading allegations" warranting sanctions.

"Discovery thoroughly disproved Musi’s baseless conspiracy theory that Apple schemed to eliminate the Musi app from the App Store to benefit 'friends' in the music industry," Apple argued.

But Musi fired back over the weekend, calling Apple's motion for sanctions "frivolous" and demanding sanctions be ordered instead against Apple for allegedly abusing the sanctions rule as a "tactic of intimidation and harassment." Musi noted that Apple's requested sanctions against Musi "are not appropriate if there is even 'some credible evidence,'" then included internal emails and references to testimony from Apple's own employees that seemingly met this low bar.

Most likely, this part of the dispute will not be settled until July 30, when a hearing is scheduled on the motions for sanctions. Apple is seemingly hoping that the court will agree that Musi's complaint misrepresents the facts and is so misleading that the complaint must be struck entirely, perhaps cutting out the heart of Musi's argument.

However, Musi pointed out that Apple previously sought sanctions and withdrew that fight, allegedly recognizing that its bid for sanctions was "baseless." To convince the court that this second bid is "equally frivolous," Musi shared receipts, attaching internal communications from Apple employees that Apple allegedly worked hard to keep out of the courtroom.

Email reveals Musi removal was “complex”

Apple has maintained that Musi's allegations regarding a music industry conspiracy are baseless, repeatedly noting that Apple can remove any app for any reason. But Musi suggested the evidence shows that Apple needed a reason to ban Musi after music industry stakeholders allegedly requested the removal and "cooked up" a YouTube complaint to serve as the basis.

Ars could not immediately reach Apple or Jennifer Golinveaux, Musi's lawyer, for comment on the sanctions battle.

But in a separate filing, Golinveaux noted that Apple sent "thousands of pages of documents" to Musi, but those did not include any documents from key Apple employees that later had to be compelled. It was those employees whose communications allegedly show the "backchannel scheme" that Apple is accused of taking part in.

Perhaps most notably, among those court-ordered productions were emails involving Elizabeth Miles. An Apple senior legal director, Miles was "significantly involved in Apple’s discussions, outside of Apple’s normal app dispute process, with both Sony Music" and the National Music Publishers Association "about the Musi app," Golinveaux said.

Miles, TorrentFreak noted, received an email in April 2024 from a Sony Music Entertainment executive who was asking for Apple's help to "identify a path forward" and "have the Musi app removed from the Apple app store." A month later, Miles scheduled a call with the Sony executive, and then four days later, another Apple lawyer requested a meeting to be set up, supposedly with YouTube, which happened within a week, Musi said evidence showed.

Apple also tried to block depositions from "two key Apple witnesses" who could explain what happened next, Golinveaux said.

Violet Evan-Karimian was Apple’s in-house counsel who was flagged "as the employee responsible for the decision to remove the Musi app," Golinveaux said. And Arun Singh was Apple’s relationship manager with YouTube who was "responsible for arranging" a "call between Apple and YouTube about the Musi app" shortly after Miles' back-and-forth with music publishers.

Singh testified that YouTube's liaison confirmed that YouTube was unaware of the supposedly open complaint against Musi. Apparently, YouTube never received any of Apple's emails warning that the 2023 complaint would be marked resolved if YouTube never responded. But while Musi argues that meant the complaint was closed at the time that Singh reached out, Apple claims that the complaint was never resolved, and YouTube was eager to pursue it once Apple reached out. While Musi claims that none of these particular details matter much, it also suggested that the idea that YouTube wouldn't get communications from the App Store seemed so far-fetched that the court should consider if such a scenario was even feasible.