Taken down after a record label's cease-and-desist, back two weeks later under a new repo: Echo Music's 2,300 stars are old users coming back
What it is A free third-party YouTube Music client for Android: no ads, background playback and offline downloads, plus external 320kbps and lossless audio sources.
Why it blew up Before it was taken down, it was one of the best-known clients in this niche. After it came back, old users returned and starred it again. The "taken down and back" story then got picked up by Spanish-language TikTok and Indian YouTube tech channels, with the top single video at 368k views.
CHow you could follow Don't build another YTM client. Copy the playbook instead: make the UI good enough to film short videos, ship every week, get exposure from Spanish- and Hindi-speaking tech channels, and put high-risk audio sources in user-installed plugins.
- Data (updated daily) · Repo created 2026-08-15 · 2,337 stars · 7 days +146
GitHub · stars Data 2026-10-09 → 2026-11-08 (31 days, 31 observations). Points before 10-28 come from deeply / archive backfill, not every day has one
In August, Echo Music, one of the most popular third-party YouTube Music clients on Android, got a legal notice from an Indian record label, shut down its service and deleted its repo. On Aug 28 it came back in a new repo, reaching 2,319 stars and 1.57M downloads within two months. It looks like a 83-day-old project, but it's really an old app with hundreds of thousands of users under a new address. People trying to grow stars for their own open source projects can learn plenty from it, but this lane is crowded and carries legal risk, so don't copy it as is.
"RIP Echo Music"
On 2026 Aug 11, a post titled "RIP Echo Music" appeared on Reddit's r/YouTubeMusicClients with 70 upvotes and 63 comments. A week later someone posted "Echo music app shutdown" on r/androidapps, calling it "one of the most popular youtube custom clients."
The reason was on the shutdown page for its lossless audio service, lossless.echomusic.fun: Indian record label Times Music had sent a formal notice citing India's Copyright Act and IT Act. The original repo, iad1tya/Echo-Music, was created in 2025 September. By the time of the takedown it had 2,568 stars and 620 open issues, and the author alone had made 773 commits.
On Aug 15, a new repo was created under the EchoMusicApp organization. It initially held only a "discontinued" notice and had 34 stars. On Aug 28, it pushed "Initial commit of Echo Music" and released v1.2.1. The next day, pinned issue #203 was titled "Echo Music is Back — Fresh Start, Issues Cleared." The author, Aditya, wrote that the first post-revival build was built on SimpMusic's code because Echo's own source wasn't available at the time. They've since recovered the original code and fully replaced SimpMusic's base.
What it is
An Android YouTube Music third-party client written in Kotlin + Jetpack Compose under the GPL-3.0 license. Official YouTube Music charges for ad-free playback, background play and offline downloads. Echo gives you those for free, plus synced lyrics, song recognition, "listen together," podcasts and AI lyric translation.
After October it added features suited to demo videos: external 320kbps and lossless (FLAC, up to 24bit/192kHz) audio source extensions, bit-perfect passthrough to USB DACs, Apple Music-style and Material You playback UIs, "Music Flow" for browsing songs like short videos, Spotify playlist import, and Android Auto. It shipped 17 releases in the two-plus months since the comeback, roughly one a week.
Where the stars came from
| Date | star(GitHub) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 08-15 | 34 | The new repo only has the shutdown notice |
| 10-09 | 1,729 | 8-28 six weeks after the comeback, about 40 a day |
| 10-27 | 2,104 | Slowed to about 20 a day |
| 11-06 | 2,319 | Last 7 days +150, first 7 days +162 |
Returning old users are the main driver. In the new repo's first week, nearly every issue was an old user asking how to restore backups or where their playlists went (#206). The new repo still hasn't caught up to the old repo's 2,568 stars, which suggests most stars are longtime fans clicking again, not new people.
The takedown and comeback became the story itself. Spanish-language TikTok tech accounts kept covering it: williamz.tech posted "¿Qué pasó con EchoMusic?" on Aug 22, 179k views; handyspiele7 put it in "Apps Útiles que deberías conocer" on Aug 26, 368k views and 18k likes; williamz.tech posted "Nueva update echo music" again on Sep 9, 141k. In India, YouTube tech creator Mukul posted "This Free Music App is Too Good to Be True" on June, 102k views, and replied to comments in Hindi. Whether this was organic or paid can't be confirmed.
The author promoted it too. During the old-version era he posted three times in a row on r/HowToMen (2025-10-01, 10-28, 12-20), the last with 112 upvotes and 149 comments. Third-party APK sites like APKMirror and Uptodown have kept listing it, bringing in long-tail search traffic.
GitHub itself sent little traffic. The repo appeared on GitHub's all-languages trending list for just one day. Almost nobody discussed it on X, and no media covered it.
The audience is concentrated in India and Latin America, where YouTube Premium penetration is low and "free, no ads, background play" is a hard need in price-sensitive markets.
1.57M downloads and "turn off auto-update"
The homepage of echomusic.fun says "📦 1,570,072+ Downloads", and that number is the total downloads of the 17 release installers on GitHub. The two latest versions, v1.4.4 and v1.4.3, have about 220k downloads each.
But the README has a bolded line: "In-app OTA updates have been permanently removed". Auto-update inside the app is gone for good, and you have to download manually from the website. It continues: "Echo Music is completely free and ad-free; the few ads shown during a manual download help support the ongoing development." The download page on the site says it too: "I know ads are annoying, but it still hardly takes a minute to download, and it helps keep the project alive."
So every existing user has to go to the website and click again on each upgrade, and 1.57M is not a user count. Going by roughly 20 tens of thousands of downloads per version, active installs sit in the hundreds of thousands to a few million range (est.).
Who it's competing with
The category has at least a dozen clones, and Echo sits mid-pack on stars:
| Project | Starting point | stars (around 11-06) | Versus Echo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metrolist | 2023-08 | About 14,000 | The category leader, with its latest version at 1.14M single-version downloads. Some call Echo's UI the same as Metrolist's. |
| SimpMusic | 2023-04 | About 12,900 | The base Echo's post-revival first build was built on. The original author replied on Reddit, "wtf, my SimpMusic had been cloned by them?" and asked for credit and GPL compliance. |
| ArchiveTune | 2025-09 | About 8,000 | Focuses on a Material You UI. In August it used a DMCA takedown against OpenTune, which had copied it. |
| BitChord | 2026-08-11 | About 5,900 | Started at the same time as Echo's new repo, also by an Indian developer, with an Apple Music-style UI. Up 952 over nearly 7 days, growing about 6x as fast as Echo. |
| InnerTune / OuterTune | 2020 / 2024 | About 6,100 / 5,400 | The previous generation, with InnerTune mostly unmaintained now. |
| Echo(brahmkshatriya) | 2023-12 | About 3,600 | Same name, different product. Search results and discussions often get mixed up. |
The whole category is a reskin chain: SimpMusic and Metrolist at the bottom, Echo in the middle, and below that people have already rebranded Echo and shipped it under new names (Meloqis Music openly calls itself an "independent rebrand" based on Echo, and Uptodown lists an "Enhanced Echo Music"). On Reddit someone also posted "I think what Echo Music is doing is disgusting," with 31 upvotes.
What sets it apart
Functionally it shares roots with Metrolist and SimpMusic: ad-free, background play, downloads and lyrics are standard. Three things really differ:
- Packaging. Two playback UIs, animations and a lossless badge. The feature list is long and looks great in a 30-second short video. Reddit reviews say "one of the few YTM clients that had a polished UI" and "got frequent updates."
- The "extension source." 320kbps and lossless sources aren't bundled in the app. Users deploy their own server to plug them in. Pushing high-risk content sources onto users lowers the risk to the main app if it's hit (inference).
- Monetization. Turning off auto-update turns every upgrade into a website visit with ads, and it adds Buy Me a Coffee, Patreon, UPI and crypto donations.
What actually made it take off was the #1 point, plus the name and old users it built up before going offline. The code wasn't the main reason.
If it were you
In one line: there's something to learn here, but building a YouTube Music client isn't worth copying. Echo's stars came from old users returning, and you don't have that group. The category already has more than a dozen clones, and Echo itself got a cease-and-desist from a record label.
Who it suits: developers who already have an app with users and want to learn how to turn user attention into GitHub stars, or who want to build a likable open source client with a UI that films well, aimed at low-willingness-to-pay markets like India and Latin America.
Who it doesn't suit: anyone starting from zero to build "yet another YTM client." Everyone runs on the same base, so only the UI is left to compete on, and BitChord is overtaking it there at 6x speed. The code is forked, and the original author has publicly called it out.
How to do it: don't copy the category, copy the playbook. Pick a service with an obvious paywall and few third-party clients yet, make the UI and animations good enough for video, and ship every week. State the open source license and credits clearly so the original author has no reason to call you out. Put high-risk content sources into plugins that users install themselves.
How to get users: target Spanish- and Hindi-speaking tech short-video creators, since they want a free, good-looking, demo-able app. Post yourself in the matching Reddit client subs, and mirror the APK on sites like APKMirror. Don't count on getting delisted and revived again; that was a one-off.
When is it too late: there's no clear deadline. BitChord and other new projects are still growing fast, so the category can still draw users, but every extra clone means each project gets a smaller share.
Misread the signal: ① Six months later, neither Echo nor BitChord had been taken down again, and a couple of new clients had gained over 5,000 stars within months, which suggests the legal risk isn't as high as it looked, so this space is still worth entering. ② On the flip side, if YouTube or the record labels start mass-filing DMCA takedowns against these repos, and even Metrolist gets knocked offline, then it's a hard no.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one YouTube Music / YouTube Premium Big-company features 2015 Hundreds of millions of users Official version removes ads, plays in background, and charges for downloads. Echo is a free third-party shell. Metrolist Open source 2023-08 14,045 stars; latest single-version download count 1.14M The category leader, with the same core features. Echo is rated as having the same UI, winning on packaging and marketing. SimpMusic Open source 2023-04 12,884 stars The code base Echo was revived from. Echo reskinned it, added features, and swapped out the donation links, and the original author publicly criticized it. BitChord Open source 2026-08-11 5,944 stars, +952 in the last 7 days; 1.13M downloads Started around the same time with an Apple Music-style UI, growing about 6× as fast as Echo. The newest strong rival. ArchiveTune Open source 2025-09 8,024 stars Built around Material You UI, highly original. The author has used DMCA takedowns against copycats. InnerTune / OuterTune Open source 2020 / 2024 6,140 / 5,445 stars Previous-generation client, slow updates, plain UI. Echo(brahmkshatriya,Echo Nightly) Open source 2023-12 3,612 stars Same name, different product: an extensible multi-source player. The name collides. Riff / Prism / NouTube / vivi-music Open source 2025–2026 826 / 352 / 1,493 / 3,991 stars A new batch of similar clients. Riff drives traffic through TikTok + Telegram. ReVanced / YTMusicUltimate Other Years YTMusicUltimate: 2,673 stars, 10,476 forks Patches the official app directly instead of writing a new client from scratch. - Where users come from
- Verified Migration of old users (after the takedown and revival): the old repo had 2,568 stars. Reddit has "RIP Echo Music" (70 upvotes) and "Echo music app shutdown" (40 comments). Most of the new version's first-week issues are old users asking how to back up and import (#206). Pinned #203 "Echo Music is Back".
- Verified Reddit self-promotion and community discussion: the author posted 2025-10-01, 10-28, and 12-20 in r/HowToMen. The 12-20 post got 112 upvotes and 149 comments. r/YouTubeMusicClients and r/androidapps keep discussing it.
- Verified TikTok Spanish tech accounts: handyspiele7 08-26 368K views; williamz.tech 08-22 "¿Qué pasó con EchoMusic?" 179K, 09-09 141K; brynn1091 101K (TikHub); whether paid is unknown
- Verified Indian tech creators on YouTube / Instagram: Mukul's "This Free Music App is Too Good to Be True" has 102k views, and the creator thanked people in the comments. D tec 23k. Technical Chaharji 5,753.
- Verified APK distribution sites: APKMirror has both the new and old package names. Uptodown, Appteka, and apktodo all have pages.
- Verified Official download page (carries ads, and is also a monetization channel): the README says OTA updates are permanently removed and users must update manually from the website. The download page ads fund the project. echomusic.fun shows 1,570,072+ downloads.
- Inferred X / media: x-radar shows 120 related posts in the last 0 days. No media coverage found.
Why Echo Music (EchoMusicApp/Echo-Music) took off
Research date: 2026-11-06. Sources: our github database (repo_day / repo_profile), the GitHub API, and web searches on Reddit, APKMirror, TikTok, and others (Jina / Exa / Brave / TikHub). Reddit page bodies were blocked by 403, so Reddit content comes only from search snippets.
Bottom line
This isn't a brand-new repo. It's an Android third-party YouTube Music client that already had 2,568 stars and hundreds of thousands of users back in 2025-09. 2026-08 got taken down over a copyright notice and the repo was deleted. In Aug 28 it came back as a new repo (EchoMusicApp/Echo-Music, created 2026-08-15). So most of the 2,306 stars come from returning users plus the "taken down, then came back" story. It got free exposure in a few waves on Spanish-language TikTok and Indian YouTube tech channels. The differentiator is mainly UI polish and a long feature list. The code itself is adapted from SimpMusic / Metrolist. The maintainer has permanently turned off OTA updates, which forces users to download from an ad-funded website. That's how they capture the traffic money.
1. Timeline (the "83 days" in this repo is misleading)
| Timeline | Event | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-09-21 | The original repo iad1tya/Echo-Music was created (later moved to the EchoMusicApp org; ended at 2,568 stars, 620 open issues, 773 commits by the author) | An old repo snapshot captured by Exa: github.com/echomusicapp/echo-music |
| 2025-10-01 / 10-28 / 12-20 | The author posted three self-promotional threads in r/HowToMen. The 12-20 thread got 112 upvotes and 149 comments. Comments kept calling it a "copy paste" of SimpMusic. | Brave search snippets: reddit.com/r/HowToMen/comments/1nuyqkb, 1oikw82, 1prnqki |
| 2025-12-21 | Someone on the XDA forums asked "is this app safe?", and replies pointed to iad1tya/Echo-Music 3.3.0 | xdaforums.com/t/…4772622 |
| Around 2026-02-16 | The original repo was archived. The author gave only a one-week heads-up on Discord / Telegram. | github.com/chayotic/Open-Source-Music-Streaming-Apps/issues/17 |
| 2026-03 ~ 08 | Revived and updated to 4.x / 5.2.89 (package name iad1tya.echo.music) | Old repo CHANGELOG; APKMirror 5.2.89 (2026-08-06) |
| Early 2026-08 | Copyright notice, service shut down. The old README cited "unauthorized use and distribution of copyrighted audio content". The Lossless Hub (lossless.echomusic.fun) shutdown page cited a formal notice from Indian label Times Music (Indian Copyright Act sections 51 and 63, IT Act sections 66 and 66D). | Early README of the new repo (Exa snapshot, 34 stars); lossless.echomusic.fun |
| 2026-08-11 / 08-18 | r/YouTubeMusicClients "RIP Echo Music" (70 upvotes, 63 comments); r/androidapps "Echo music app shutdown" (22 upvotes, 40 comments, calling it "one of the most popular youtube custom clients") | Brave search snippets |
| 2026-08-15 | New repo EchoMusicApp/Echo-Music created, initially containing only a "stopped" notice, 34 stars | GitHub API created_at; Exa snapshot |
| 2026-08-21 ~ 25 | Released 1.2.0 based on SimpMusic code first (package name echo.music.iad1tya, listed on APKMirror 08-25). The description said "minimal advertisements are integrated within the application". SimpMusic author maxrave-dev replied on Reddit "wtf, my SimpMusic had been cloned by them?" and demanded credit and GPL compliance. Another post, "I think what Echo Music is doing is disgusting", got 31 upvotes. | APKMirror 1.2.0 page; Brave snippets r/YouTubeMusicClients/1vub2cc, 1vwgt5v |
| 2026-08-28 | New repo commit "Initial commit of Echo Music", released v1.2.1. 08-29 pinned issue #203 "Echo Music is Back", saying the original Echo source was recovered and SimpMusic is no longer the base. | GitHub API commit history; issue #203 |
| 2026-09 ~ 10 | About one release a week (v1.2.2 → v1.4.4). In October it added extension sources, lossless (FLAC) at 320kbps, USB DAC bit-perfect output, a Spotify library, and Android Auto. | Releases; buymeacoffee.com/iad1tya announcement |
| Now | 2,319 stars (GitHub API, 11-06), 229 forks, 56 watchers. Cumulative release downloads: 1,570,070. | GitHub API |
Star curve (our github database, repo_day): 10-09 had 1,729 stars → 10-27 had 2,104 → 11-06 had 2,306. So from 8-28 to 10-09, over these six weeks it gained about 1,700 stars (roughly 40 per day). It then slowed to about 20 per day. It was +150 in the last 7 days and +162 in the 7 days before that, a steady climb. The old repo had 2,568 stars, and the new repo has not caught up yet.
Downloads (GitHub API, summed from release asset download_count): 17 versions total 1.57M downloads, with single versions ranging from 20k to 220k (v1.4.4 had 222,210 downloads, v1.4.3 had 220,027). The official site's "📦 1,570,072+ Downloads" is this number, not a separate count. Because OTA is off, every old user counts as a download on each update, so this number is not the user count. Going by the latest version's 20 tens of thousands of downloads, active installs are probably in the hundreds of thousands at most (estimate, not verified).
2. Competitors
| Product | Form | Launched | Scale | How it differs from Echo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube Music official / YouTube Premium | Big-company features | 2015 | Hundreds of millions of users | The official app charges for ad removal, background play, and downloads. Echo is a third-party shell that avoids paying. |
| Metrolist(MetrolistGroup) | Open-source Android | 2023-08 | 14,045 stars; latest v13.7.0 single-version downloads 1,143,116 | The category leader. Its single-version downloads come close to all of Echo's versions combined. Echo is rated as having "the same UI as Metrolist". |
| SimpMusic(maxrave-dev) | Open-source Android/desktop | 2023-04 | 12,884 stars | The code base Echo was revived from. Echo reskinned it, added features, and swapped out the donation links, which drew public complaints from the original author. |
| BitChord(kushagrasinghx) | Open-source Android | 2026-08-11 | 5,944 stars, +952 in the last 7 days; 1,128,044 release downloads | Started at the same time as the new Echo, with Indian developers too. Its Apple Music-style UI is growing 6× as fast as Echo, making it the newest strong rival in the category. |
| ArchiveTune(rukamori) | Open-source Android | 2025-09 | 8,024 stars | Built around Material You UI. The author used a DMCA takedown against OpenTune, which copied it, in 2026-08. |
| InnerTune / OuterTune | Open-source Android | 2020 / 2024 | 6,140 / 5,445 stars | A previous-generation YTM client. InnerTune has essentially stopped updating. |
| ViMusic / ViTune | Open-source Android | 2022 / 2023 | 9,468 (archived) / 1,215 stars | The old generation, ViMusic is dead |
| vivi-music | Open-source Android | 2025-04 | 3,991 stars | architecture reference credited in Echo's README |
| Echo (brahmkshatriya, "Echo Nightly") | Open-source Android | 2023-12 | 3,612 stars | Same name, different product: an extension-based player (Spotify/YTM/Deezer). The name clash mixes up searches and discussion |
| Riff, Prism, limusic, NouTube | Open source | 2025–2026 | 826 / 352 / 1,823 / 1,493 stars | A newer batch; Riff rides TikTok videos (rootlesszen 2.67M views) and Telegram traffic |
| ReVanced / YTMusicUltimate | Modifies the official App | Years | YTMusicUltimate: 2,673 stars, 10,476 forks | Patches the official app directly instead of writing a new client from scratch. |
Verdict: the niche is crowded, with at least a dozen similar apps. Echo sits mid-pack on GitHub stars. Its code is not very original. It took off because the name was already familiar to users and the UI is appealing.
3. Growth tactics (where users come from)
- Returning old users (main driver, confirmed): the old version 2025-09 to 2026-08 had a base of users. When it was pulled, Reddit had "RIP" and "shutdown" threads. In the first week of the new version, nearly all issues were old users asking "how do I restore my backup" and "my playlists are gone" (#206). Most of the new repo's stars came from old fans starring it again.
- Author promoting on Reddit (confirmed): three posts on r/HowToMen (2025-10-01, 10-28, 12-20); organic discussion on r/YouTubeMusicClients and r/androidapps.
- Spanish-language TikTok tech accounts (confirmed; unclear whether organic or paid): handyspiele7 "Apps Útiles que deberías conocer - Echo Music" (2026-08-26.4M views, 18k likes); williamz.tech "¿Qué pasó con EchoMusic?" (08-22.2M) and "Nueva update echo music" (09-9.14M); brynn1091 (09-13.1M); personn177 (09-614k). The drama of the takedown and comeback became ready-made topics for these accounts. (TikHub search)
- Indian YouTube tech accounts (confirmed): Mukul "This Free Music App is Too Good to Be True" (2026-06-14.1M views; the creator thanked viewers in Hindi in the comments); D tec (2026-223k); Technical Chaharji (2026-03,5,753). There are also Instagram Reels (views not counted). (YouTube Data API videos)
- Third-party APK site distribution (confirmed): APKMirror lists both the old and new package names; Uptodown, Appteka and apktodo all have pages, bringing in long-tail search traffic.
- GitHub itself (weak): the README shows a Trendshift badge. A repo under 60 days old can't enter trending, and our database only logged its ranking on any-language charts up to 1 days. No discussion found on X (x-radar found 0 relevant posts in the last 120 days).
How the money comes back: no ads in the app (1.2.0 once had built-in ads while running on top of SimpMusic, later removed). The README states "In-app OTA updates have been permanently removed", so updates must be downloaded from echomusic.fun, and that download page carries ads ("I know ads are annoying… it helps keep the project alive"). There are also Buy Me a Coffee, Patreon, UPI and crypto donations, plus a readme.cash sponsor slot. The README makes the third-party API reseller api-route.com the default for AI lyrics translation and links to its key sign-up page. That looks like a partnership or referral placement (unverified). Revenue is not public.
4. Why it took off
- The name already had a following in a small circle: before the takedown it was already "one of the most popular third-party YTM clients" (quoted from an r/androidapps post). The new repo is effectively reusing an old brand.
- The takedown and revival are a story in themselves: "RIP Echo Music" and "Qué pasó con EchoMusic?" followed by "Echo Music is Back". Back and forth gave content creators two separate topics.
- Appealing UI, frequent updates: Reddit users say "one of the few YTM clients that had a polished UI" and "got frequent updates". After the revival it shipped 17 versions in two months.
- A feature list long enough for short videos: lossless/320kbps via extensions, USB DAC bit-perfect output, an Apple-style player, Music Flow (TikTok-style song browsing), Spotify library import, song recognition, AI lyrics translation, listen-together. It looks good in a 30-second clip.
- It hits a real platform need: YouTube Premium penetration is low in price-sensitive markets like India and Latin America, where "free, no ads, background playback" is a hard requirement. The audience is mainly in India and Spanish-speaking regions.
5. Differentiation, and why it broke out
Feature-wise it shares a lineage with Metrolist / SimpMusic, and the core capabilities (ad-free, background play, downloads, synced lyrics) are common to all of them. The real differences are three: (1) the UI and brand packaging (Apple-style / Material You dual players, Canvas, animations); (2) an aggressive feature stack, of which the "extension source" approach, where users plug in their own 320kbps / lossless servers and the copyright risk is pushed onto self-hosting users, is rare among peers; (3) the growth and monetization play: disabling OTA turns every update into a visit to a website with ads. What really made it take off is (1) the brand and old user base it built up beforehand. Technical differences were not the main factor; (3) is what sets it apart from purely open-source peers on whether it can pay its way. The costs are visible too: the SimpMusic author publicly accused it, Reddit users call it a reskin, a record label has already sent it a legal notice, and it could be pulled again.
6. Visibility and copycats
- Visibility: it's circulating in small circles. It shows up in Reddit YTM client communities, Spanish and Indian tech short-video accounts, and AlternativeTo. No mainstream media or big X accounts were found covering it (the makeuseof article is about the similarly named brahmkshatriya/echo). Revenue is not public.
- Copycats and forks: Meloqis Music (kaarthikarorasahabji, which openly calls itself an "independent rebrand" based on Echo Music, and also has a KMP version); an "Enhanced Echo Music" fork on Uptodown; a fork of DevCoderMax/Echo-Music; PR #689 "NOIR MUSIC". The whole niche is a reskin chain: SimpMusic/Metrolist → Echo → Meloqis.
7. What others can learn
- The monetization loop for open-source apps: GitHub earns trust and stars → disable in-app OTA → ads and donations on the download page. This doesn't break the "no ads in the app" promise, and every update still becomes an ad impression.
- The "revival" itself can be run as a marketing event: build a core user group in advance on Discord / Telegram, let the community defend you during the takedown, then bring people back all at once when you return.
- Shape features for short-video display (dual-player styles, swipe-style discovery, lossless badges), then hand them to Spanish- and Hindi-speaking tech creators for free distribution.
- "Extension source" design: put high-risk content sources in plugins that users connect themselves, lowering the risk that the main app gets taken down.
8. Still unclear
- Whether the Spanish TikTok and Indian YouTube videos were organic or paid partnerships: unverified.
- How much the website ads earn, and whether the api-route.com default AI translation is a commercial deal: unverified.
- The full legal sequence of the August takedown (whether the Times Music notice covered the whole app or only Lossless Hub) rests only on the shutdown page and README accounts.
- How much of the 1.57M downloads are repeat updates and bots, and the true number of active users, is unknown.
- Reddit post bodies were blocked (403), so vote and comment counts come from Brave search snippets.
Sources
- GitHub API: repos/EchoMusicApp/Echo-Music, releases, commits, contributors; repos/kushagrasinghx/BitChord, MetrolistGroup/Metrolist, etc.
- Our github repo_day / repo_profile tables (2026-10-09 to 11-06)
- github.com/EchoMusicApp/Echo-Music/issues/203, /issues/206
- github.com/chayotic/Open-Source-Music-Streaming-Apps/issues/…
- lossless.echomusic.fun/, echomusic.fun/
- www.apkmirror.com/apk/echomusicapp/echo-music-github-version…
- Reddit (Brave search snippets): r/YouTubeMusicClients 1vlqgpv, 1vub2cc, 1vwgt5v; r/androidapps 1vrk9lx; r/HowToMen 1nuyqkb, 1oikw82, 1prnqki
- xdaforums.com/t/is-this-app-safe-to-use.4772622/
- buymeacoffee.com/iad1tya/echo-music-announces-extension-supp…
- TikTok (TikHub search "echo music app"): handyspiele7, williamz.tech, brynn1091, personn177
- YouTube: oTjTedvO30o (Mukul), bsOS_4SNZtE (D tec), 8lGB75-2V_o (Technical Chaharji)
- github.com/kaarthikarorasahabji/Meloqis-Music, enhanced-echo-music.en.uptodown.com/android
- GitHub DMCA repo: github/dmca 2026/08/2026-08-25-archivetune.md (ArchiveTune vs. OpenTune)