Is it possible to build a successful music streaming platform without striking licensing deals? Actually, maybe. Or, as this week’s Wired piece puts it: “Musi appears to have pulled off something remarkable: Building a booming business in streaming music without taking on any of the legwork of striking deals with labels and distributors.”
That last sentence might raise the eyebrows and/or hackles of some readers. Because sure enough, you can download the app and stream Kendrick Lamar’s “Meet The Grahams” within Musi’s DSP-like interface inside a minute, and no money will have changed hands. Playlists titled “Hot This Week” round up the latest hot releases (more Kendrick and Drake).
Users can create and share playlists with each other. Banner ads pepper the app, appearing between songs in playlists. Full screen video ads play as songs play. Ads can be removed “forever” with a one-off in-app purchase of £5.99, if you’d like that. It all feels very close to the DSP experience you already know.
So how does it work? Well, selecting and playing the Olivia Rodrigo song “Vampire” simply plays the official Vevo video within the app. So from a technical perspective, it’s not too different to playing music on YouTube, although we didn’t see any YouTube pre-roll ads when testing it. Ads surround the video, so Musi seems to be making money when users stream the YouTube video inside its app. But does Rodrigo make any money? That’s unclear.
One key question is: is Musi a “DSP” as we understand it in the general sense? For the Musi user base, most of whom apparently skew younger, the experience is close enough to being “free Spotify” to result in them downloading in numbers that push it into Apple’s the top five streaming apps.
As reported this week, Spotify are trying to tempt users into its paid tier by offering lyrics, AI DJs, algorithmically created playlists – and other things that Musi doesn’t offer – behind that paywall. But do all of The Kids really want all of that stuff? Musi suggests that at least some of them may be happy for now with YouTube in a differently-shaped box.
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