This new music streaming platform ‘Musi’ advertises free music streaming for listeners, so what’s the catch?

Musi is a new music streaming service offering cost-free listening. Unlike Spotify’s free music streaming tier, Music doesn’t interrupt your music with advertisements. Instead, they place adverts around their user interface and video ads that play whilst you listen.

They have the hottest and latest tunes and seem to be offering them at no cost to their users. In fact, Wired suggest that the service hasn’t even made deals with labels or distributors for the music. So, how does it work?

Musi sources their music from Google’s YouTube. This means that you might be streaming the Vevo music video from an artist’s YouTube channel when you play a track. This all raises concerns as to whether its legal and how rightsholders are getting paid.

Wired have reported that now record labels and music industry groups are also asking those questions. Questions such as “Does Music have the right to distribute and monetise the music users stream on its platform?”

Vevo, a music video distributor often releasing on YouTube wrote: “We have recently been made aware of the music video app, Musi. Music videos on the app have not been licensed by Vevo, and Musi is using the Vevo mark on its service without license, and Vevo will take appropriate measures.”

Musi have been in trouble before. In 2019 the app filed a suit against an ad network, claiming they withheld payments for ads that ran on the Musi app. That network filed a counter-complaint stating that they had stopped payments to Musi for fraudulent practice, writing: “Musi was knowingly and illegally ripping music off from YouTube.”

At least one major label is reportedly considering legal action.