Ask HN: How to determine if MuseScore are fraudsters or plain idiots?
by clan | 2025-09-26 09:48:56+00:00
NETS[0] has blocked credit card payments for MuseScore. They are not just a PSP but the card issuer for a lot of banks in the Nordics. So the easy answer should be: Fraudsters - stay away. But things are more complicated than that.

My SO is a musician and music teacher (as they all are!) and she wants to renew her subscription. She called our bank and they told her it was flagged for fraud. They can normally do an individual lift on specific transactions but not in this case as it was a "hard" ban. Nothing they could do. One of her friends told her that she had the same problems yesterday.

MuseScore has previously split up into MuseScore Studio (the FOSS GPL2 music notation software) and MuseScore Hub (the commercial community part). I like that. But the FOSS project pushes the Hub hard on the download page[1] with a big "call to action" saying "join musescore now". Furthermore the Hub is a good (enough) product for my SO and she is willing to fork out the money.

We found MusecScore via a bright fellow named Martin Keary (@Tantacrul)[2] which many of you proabably already know. Since we first saw his videos he has since joined Muse as Head of Software[3]. He seems to do really great things. Bravo. But something is seriously off.

A year ago they seemed to have the same problems with banks marking them as fraudulent[4] and it is not hard to find detractors on reddit [5][6][7]. Even here on HackerNews[8] they do not shine in the light of high moral standards.

So my guess is that they are too aggressive on the subscriptions and hence see too many chargebacks. But that is pure speculation and it might be more nefarious than that. They do actually provide a valuable service so I suspect they are not fraudsters in the traditional sense. But having so many dark patterns that it gets them banned _repeatedly_ makes me come to the very harsh judgement: Idiots.

When you look at either musescore.com or musescore.org they are completely squeaky clean coorporate style. No mentioning of complaints, no mea culpas. No acknowledgements. If you are innocent and gets unfairly banned you would put that front and center in your news section. Does it look good? No - but it is better than 3rd parties telling the world you are banned for fraud.

mehlmao[8] took the high moral ground and I agree with mandatum[8] that they work in distateful ways. On the other hand MuseScore is a really good product and in many ways the best on the market with a huge momentum.

As a proper nerd I could "just" write my own Hub software and integrate it. You know; a weekend project. Hey, with a little business savvy I could eat their lunch and make a buck. They might not enjoy tight integration and tell me to "fork off". Oops. I have no ballast for completing such an endeveour and I would only cause what ends up as malicious disruption.

Instead I will climb a high horse and simply not use them. Great, but there are no good options. So I'll climb a little down and say the important software is open source and hence good on its own. But my SO will clobber me and tell me the Hub is really important to her work. To such a degree that she on her own already have investigated other payment options (PayPal etc.) for the presumed fraudsters!!! Real life hits hard.

So how do I determine if they are real fraudsters and I should take the fight and convince her to look elsewhere? And where? Do I dare to simply conclude they are just idiots and accept the risk? Wait and see if the ban is lifted and just let go of all worries. Move on with life.

Do you have any alternatives? How do you impact an important project which is on a really bad path? What is your stance?