Looks like Apple Music, but it's a free YouTube Music: a designer's open-source client, 87 days, 5,900 stars, 1.12M downloads

An Indian product designer took a third-party YouTube Music client, reskinned it to look like Apple Music, and added "plugins that plug in lossless sources." The category was already crowded, with a long line of projects like InnerTune, ViMusic, Metrolist, and SimpMusic ahead of it. It still took off, mainly thanks to 10-second TikToks from phone-customization creators. Below: what it is, why this one specifically, where users come from, who's copying it, and where to start if you want an open-source project that gets stars too.

One video, 370k views, caption is a single line

On Oct 2026, 15, TikTok account @ui.noir posted a video with the caption "Name App : BitChord" and tags #samsung #oneui85 #techaesthetic. The footage is a Samsung phone; the player screen has a frosted-glass background, word-by-word scrolling lyrics, and an animated cover. It looks like Apple Music. By Nov 6 the video had 372k views and 16k likes (TikTok, 11-06).

The same day, Android Police published a long article titled "BitChord is an open source YouTube Music alternative that puts Google to shame." Author Marvin Velasco opens by complaining that YouTube Music is "bloated like never before" and keeps getting slower with each update. Later he writes: "It uses YouTube Music's catalog but looks and feels like Apple Music."

At that point BitChord was only two months old, with 3,000 GitHub stars. By Nov 6 it had reached 5,948 (GitHub, 11-06 late), gaining 100 to 200 almost every day over the following month.

What it actually is

A third-party YouTube Music client written in Kotlin, open source under GPL-3.0, free and ad-free, usable without signing into a Google account. The main target is Android phones, with later releases for Android TV, Windows / Linux, and web. The feature list is similar to its peers: search, playback, offline downloads, lyrics, playlist import, Discord status, Last.fm. It adds two things on top:

• Skin: the first line of the README reads "Aesthetic YouTube Music Client." Settings include a Liquid Glass appearance option, and the lyric animations use the open-source Apple Music lyrics component (binimum/am-lyrics). To see the full animations you have to enable "high-performance mode," which Android Police says makes the phone heat up and drain the battery faster.
• Lossless: through plugins (module sources) you can connect external FLAC / ALAC sources, falling back to YouTube Music when they're unavailable. There's also bit-perfect USB DAC output, beat-aligned Automix, and dynamic covers like Spotify's.

The developer is Kushagra Singh. His personal site says "Product Designer," his GitHub bio says "web dev, ui & ai," his timezone is GMT+5:30 (inferred to be India), and his company field lists an ad agency. His earlier repos all had single-digit stars. One, clove-browser, is an "iOS 26-style Android browser" with just 4 stars. The same idea (an iOS skin for Android) got no attention on a browser but took off on a music player. The next section explains why.

Why this one

This category has long proven there's demand, and the barrier is low. Free, ad-free YouTube Music clients have been built in open-source circles for years: InnerTune has existed for 2020 years, Metrolist now has 14k stars, SimpMusic 13k, ViMusic 9,500 (GitHub, 11-06). The code and APIs are ready-made, so building one isn't hard.

The problem is that all the big ones look the same. Metrolist, SimpMusic, PixelPlayer, and OuterTune all use Material 3, the native Android look. As of 11-06, BitChord is the only sizable project with an Apple Music visual style. Android users covet Apple Music's interface and lyric animations, but it doesn't work well on Android and costs money.

This difference can be explained in 15 seconds. Explaining whether a feature is good takes time; looking like Apple Music only needs a picture. The big TikToks follow one formula: make you think it's Apple Music, then reveal "free, no ads, download from GitHub." One title reads "BitChord no ads, premium feels, liquid glass ui." An iOS skin on a browser shows no contrast in a video; on a music player the contrast is "giving away the paid thing for free." That's the difference between clove-browser and BitChord.

Timing. Official YouTube Music keeps getting bloated, and the Android Police piece spends most of its length on that. Long-running open-source clients have also been dropping like flies: ViMusic stopped updating in July 2024, InnerTune went quiet from November 2025, and OpenTune was taken down by a DMCA notice in Sep 2026 over a GPL dispute 2. BitChord's downloads first jumped in early September, which lines up neatly, so it may have caught some of the users looking for a new client (inference, causation not verified).

Where the users come from

View counts come from TikTok's 11-06 figures, star counts from GitHub's daily records, and download counts are the sum of APK downloads across GitHub Releases.

The main channels are phone-customization and app-recommendation creators on TikTok and Instagram, and many aren't English-language accounts: there are Spanish-, Indonesian-, and Vietnamese-language creators, plus many small accounts in each language posting install tutorials. Open-source circles (Reddit, X, FMHY) handled cold start; the Android Police piece got it in front of tech readers. There's no sign of paid promotion, and it isn't on an app store: the APK is downloaded directly from GitHub, and the author only added Ko-fi and PayPal for donations.

Stars are only part of the picture. Total APK downloads across GitHub Releases are about 1.12M, a figure also shown on the official homepage. The README has a live "now listening" badge that showed 11-06 people online at the time of 2,472's crawl, 1,922 of them on Android. Download count is nearly 200 times the star count.

Who's competing, and who's copying

There are already many copycats. On GitHub there are a dozen or so derivative repos, including ChordPlay, a car-head-unit version, a TV version, and a PC follow-up. On the plugin side, people have built self-hosted Plex / Jellyfin plugins, a Qobuz FLAC plugin, and a Telegram plugin, and each plugin author promotes it.

Google Play tells the story even more clearly. The original isn't on the store, so someone else took the name: "BitChord MP3 & Offline Player" was listed in Sep 29, has 91k installs as of 11-06, and gained 16k in the last 7 days (Google Play, 11-06), with no connection to the original author. There are also lookalike download sites like bitchord.org riding the name. Many people already search for "BitChord," and others are capturing that traffic.

Where the risk is

The Android Police piece itself says it: apps like this use someone else's catalog, and "if Google suddenly cracks down on third-party apps or changes its APIs, BitChord would lose its entire catalog at once." DMCA takedowns of similar projects are common; OpenTune happened two months earlier. BitChord moved the lossless sources into third-party plugins, shifting some copyright risk onto plugin authors, but the main repo can still be taken down.

If it were you

The one-line verdict: don't build the Nth YouTube Music client, since BitChord already owns the Apple Music skin. What's worth copying is its playbook: find a category with many open-source alternatives that all look the same, give it a skin people covet that the platform doesn't offer, add one hard selling point, and make it something a viewer gets in 15 seconds.

Who it suits: developers who can design and polish motion and detail to the point that a screenshot can fool people. BitChord's author is a product designer by trade. Those who know Android or the open-source alternative circle of a particular platform. Those who can ship a dozen or so high-frequency updates over a month or two.

Who it doesn't suit: those who only pile on features with mediocre UI, since this category's features are already saturated. Those who only want to post in English-speaking circles, since its biggest reach comes from Latin American and Southeast Asian minority-language creators. Those who fear takedowns, since third-party clients can receive legal letters at any time and the stars and reputation built up can vanish overnight.

How to do it: three approaches, ranked by ease of replication:

1. Build for the platform it skipped. BitChord's phone version is Android-only. Car systems, watches, and iPads are places where users are stuck with the official app, and the Android Police piece also mentions that Android Auto and watches only support the official version. Community car and TV versions already show people want this.
2. Use the same move in another category. Start with a big-brand app that's paid, ad-supported, or increasingly bloated, then check whether its open-source alternatives all look alike. Podcasts, video, photo galleries, launchers, keyboards, and weather are all worth a look. When choosing, ask first: can the contrast of "giving away the paid thing for free" be seen in the picture? The author's own iOS-style browser has only 4 stars, which shows a pretty skin alone isn't enough.
3. Reverse the skin direction. In the same category, there are people who covet Material You or some niche design style. Or swap in a different catalog, such as Spotify or SoundCloud, and do the same thing (unverified how crowded these directions are right now).

How to get users: follow its route. For cold start, post on r/foss and the relevant category subreddits with that hard selling point as the title; then get listed on free resource indexes like FMHY and put the badge at the top of the README. To build volume, proactively send links to creators on TikTok and Instagram who do phone customization and "underrated useful apps," prioritizing Spanish-, Indonesian-, and Vietnamese-language accounts, since they're short on content and one post can reach hundreds of thousands of views. Stars only grow steadily once media like Android Police or XDA have written about you. Also, claim the name and domain on Play early, so copycat apps don't capture the search traffic.

When to move: As early as possible. Liquid Glass, iOS's new visual style, is hot right now, and Android users are envious. Once Google ships something similar for Android, or a big competitor adds the same skin, the contrast is gone. In the music client slot, BitChord has already taken the spot.

Signs you've misread it: ① A big player like BitChord or Metrolist gets a DMCA takedown, which would show third-party clients have hit their platform risk ceiling, so stars aren't worth chasing; ② You switch categories, a beauty creator posts a video, but views don't climb, which means the contrast isn't strong enough and viewers don't see it as "free"; ③ Two or three months from now BitChord's daily stars drop to the dozens and downloads follow, which would mean this wave was a short-video fad, not the approach itself.