Apple Wins Decisive Victory in Musi App Store Removal Lawsuit

A lawsuit brought against Apple by music streaming app Musi has been dismissed by a federal judge, after she ruled that Apple's developer agreement gives it the right to remove any app from the App Store at any time, "with or without cause." Launched in 2013 by two Canadian teenagers, Musi was an app that played YouTube videos in a stripped-down interface, showed its own ads (removable for $5.99), and let users build playlists. Basically, it was a free music streaming service built on top of YouTube's content but without paying rights holders, and it was downloaded from the App Store tens of millions of times. Musi claimed it complied with YouTube's terms, but Apple pulled it from the App Store in September 2024, following pressure from Sony, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), and the National Music Publishers Association. Musi subsequently sued Apple for pulling the app, alleging that its removal was based on unsubstantiated intellectual property cla