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Musi’s free music streaming app is a hit with thrifty teens. The app claims to tap content on YouTube, but some in the music industry question the legitimacy of that model.
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- Title
- Musi Won Over Millions. Is the Free Music Streaming App Too Good to Be True?
- Authors
- Kate Knibbs, Matt Simon, Matt Burgess, Kate O'Flaherty, Andy Greenberg, Reece Rogers, Paresh Dave, Caroline Haskins, Elana Klein, Lauren Goode
- Published
- May 7 2024
- Word count
- 2057 words
I’ve never heard of Musi but it sounds like a brilliant idea. I’ve replaced all of my YouTube activity with FreeTube, a desktop app that scrapes the site to bypass ads and all the other crap that riddles the YT platform. It’s a glorious, streamlined alternative viewing experience.
I don’t see how what Musi’s doing is any different. There’s a ton of music available for free on YouTube, and I could use FreeTube to approximate Musi’s functionality too, but it doesn’t have a music-specific UI which is where the real value is. As far as I’m concerned, if YT is going to serve free content, it’s our right as users to consume it in whatever way we see fit. I have zero problem with stripping out user-hostile bloat on the client side.
Obviously, I recognize that the people who make the rules don’t think like me. These decisions always favor big business and bolster their IP protections. So now that the media (and RIAA + YT) have set their gaze on Musi, I’m certain its days are numbered.
I don't know about the legal legitimacy of apps like Musi and FreeTube, but they certainly violate the spirit of the social contract one enters when using a service like YouTube. YouTube isn't free, you just pay for it with your time and attention, through ads. Such a service cannot exist without some kind of revenue model.
If everybody used FreeTube, YouTube would either cease to exist, or start using DRM like Netflix.
I get it, but I file this squarely under “not my problem.” It’s YouTube’s business to secure its revenue stream, not mine — and the social contract you mention doesn’t exist. People put billboards up on the side of the highway, but that doesn’t mean anyone is obligated to look at them.
If YouTube is going to run a publicly available media server, then they get to control that server. And I on the other hand get to control the client that connects to it, on my hardware that I own. They don’t get to dictate to me how I use my computer. Since the dawn of the internet there has been a cat-and-mouse game between those who believe information wants to be free, and those who keep trying increasingly convoluted and legislation-backed ways to lock it down.
This sounds pretty radical in 2024 but I’ll continue to say it even as the Overton window slides further away from me. I think it’s inevitable that the pendulum will swing back, eventually. The ultimate destination of the DRM mindset can only be an anti-human corporate dystopia. It’s unsustainable.
I'm not even talking about legislation or copyright law here. I'm pointing out that it wouldn't exactly be hard for YouTube to lock down their service to only approved clients, and that is exactly what they would do if everyone started using alternative clients that render the service impossible to maintain. They don't need laws to be able to do that.
I fully agree with this, I'm pointing out that certain actions in aggregate have consequences. And while YouTube cannot control what you do with their data on your computer, they can control whether you have access to that data in the first place.
Information doesn't want anything. People want information to be free.
I view this attitude of not wanting to pay for any media akin to people who go to restaurants and only eat free bread. If enough of them do it, eventually restaurants will just stop offering free bread entirely and ruin it for the rest of us.
I think we are a long way from that, and a pre-requisite for ever reaching this state is moving to an economic model where artists and builders no longer need to monetize their labor in order to feed and shelter their families. Until that point, I think it's unethical not to compensate them for their work.
It is only as unethical as it is to throw away junk mail when getting your mail from your mailbox.
If they decide to make only authorized clients able to watch video, I will stop using the service. Until then, I will take the bundle of data they hand me and take the relevant parts that I care about in exactly the same way that I take out the relevant mail from my mailbox and pitch the rest.
The people at the top of our society don't care about ethics, so why should those of us at the bottom? We are taken advantage of left and right, and our government doesn't do anything about it. In fact, they seem to encourage it. There's a difference between buying an album from some indie artist you enjoy because you know that it helps them individually and finding a way to stream content for free from one of the biggest corporations in the world that holds some responsibility for how bad things have gotten. Google should lock down YouTube if they feel they deserve more money, but the fact that they haven't shows they know how that will go.
"Ethics" becomes a quaint notion when you get enough life experience to see that ethical people don't seem to thrive in modern capitalism. Until those at the top truly lead by example, you can't expect us nobodies to live by some fake social contract that never seems to apply to us.
I don't think this needs to be polarized between the extremes of "you're obligated to watch the ads that make the service free so you don't ruin it for everyone else" and "it's my right to do what I want with my devices".
Both things are true of course, but I think between the poles there is this: enshittification causes people to look for alternatives. Which is good.
Bypassing compensation for content is bad for everyone if the scale gets big enough. But a few big players sucking up most of the compensation and increasingly screwing everyone else involved to keep the line going up as they near the limits of available growth is also bad for everyone but them.
Musi, and other alternative clients, are gonna get killed by the big guys, but they provide an unintentional service by showing us that the marketplace wants new options. Hopefully more sustainable options will fill the demand.
Isn't the idea behind "information wants to be free" that it's hard to control and therefore its tendency is to disseminate? Rather than being a literal description?
I don't mean to present it as polarized extremes here. I use adblockers myself. I'm also mindful about which sites I disable them for, and which ones I pay directly to get ad-free service.
I think YouTube is a valuable if flawed resource, and I'd hate to see it go away because I know it cannot exist under our current economic model any other way. Community-run alternatives like PeerTube would absolutely melt if they tried to actually operate at the scale of YouTube.
One day YT will cease to exist and the world will keep spinning.
If it goes away, something will replace it.
Did it take Musi to show us that people want both free and convenient options?
It's an indication that people are fed up enough to migrate in large numbers, markets usually respond to that.
See relevant xkcd
There are other pieces of software employing the same idea as Musi. I specifically like Spotube, but there are others too.
Mirror, for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.ph/BsE5I