Crazy charges from Musescore have cost me a fortune

UPDATE: Musescore have repaid me most of the biggest charges they made to my card. I disputed the remaining charges with my bank and they refunded most of them. For some reason one $50+ charge was not refunded. I have no idea why but at this stage it's probably easier just to leave things as they stand and be greateful I got back the vast majority of what was taken out of my account.

Musescore is a website built for storing and sharing musical scores created with the free software of the same name. The software makers have no ties to the score-sharing site that I'm aware of apart from sharing the same name and being built to work with the same software. Most arrangements uploaded to the Musescore site are created by music fans based on their favorite artist's songs.

I've been using Musescore to host my original music scores since September 2021. Incidentally, all of my scores are also available in PDF form for free from my domain at musicalescpaism.com. Up to this point I have uploaded well over one hundred scores of my original music to Musescore, most of which are publicly viewable.

How I got to this point

I began publishing original classical and jazz music during the lockdowns. I was composing very quickly and within a couple of years had over 140 tracks. Over fifty of those have been produced and released onto the streaming platforms (just look up Rosie Williams). I earn a small amount of royalties for the tracks I've released to the streaming platforms based on these scores and no money at all for the scores I make free to download here.

Musescore has been useful in keeping this large number of scores organized and saved somewhere I considered to be safe. A few weeks ago, I decided to try something new: recording covers of popular music. I play the trumpet, flugelhorn, piano and flute and I'm studying contemporary music at TAFE. So I began purchasing popular music scores from the Musescore site.

This is where the problem began. Without my knowing it, every time I purchased a popular music score at prices between $1.99-$7.99 AUD, Musescore charged me random (and multiple) amounts of over $50 on top of the cost of the score. I had no idea this was going on till I checked my account on Tuesday and found a greatly diminished bank balance and multiple pending charges of over $50 by Musescore for a single day. I knew there would be more of these charges but I couldn't face tallying the full amount at that point.

I immediately went to my bank and they arranged a call back. The bank suggested I cancel the card but acknowledged that wouldn't stop the pending charges from going through, much less refund any amount to my account, I opted to follow up with Musescore first and see if they would refund me.

I found their support email and sent them a frantic request on Sept 2 seeking their help to reverse charges on the latest multiple charges of over $50 from that single day. I attached a screenshot of the pending transactions and told them I had just cancelled my subscription. I realized I needed to get my bank details away from this site. I found however, that while the subscription was still active (for the last month) that I could not remove my card details.

My initial contact with them got a stock reply that I could refund the Membership fee but there was no attempt to explain, much less refund, the charges I was seeking to have reversed. It was as if I had said nothing about them at all. I responded with my Musescore profile url and asked them again to explain the multiple charges for what looked like the same items. I included screenshots again of each (most recent) charge clearly showing the same details with multiple charges including several of varying amounts over $50 AUD.

It's taken me a couple of days to get up the gumption to calculate just how much I've been charged by Musescore since I started buying scores from them in late July. I knew the last few transactions were just the tip of the iceberg so was afraid to look. Now I've added it up, it turns out, Musescore has charged me over $1000 since July for scores that should be worth between $1.99 and $7.99!!!

You can see the full list of these charges at this Google Drive link. This can be compared to my billing history (which has zero charges over $50) and a total cost of $140 AUD.

After getting nothing more than a request for my email address used with the service, I attached to it the list of all the transactions with Musescore (some 67). I had placed an X next to the most obvious fifteen erroneous charges. According to Musescore support:

"It seems that you purchased a score with the discount, which also included subscribing to the Premium plan.
​I have issued a refund in the amount of 100% of the charge of 44.99 aud. It can take up to 10 business days for the refund to reach your account. The auto-renew is canceled, so no charges will be applied in the future. Other charges are for music sheets."

So according to Musescore they have charged me over $1000 for 'music sheets'. There are no receipts for any purchases of over $7.99 as can be seen from my billing history. This does show Musescore admitting they have charged me these multiple amounts over $50. So here I am being forced to make public their billing practices as they have not refunded me the erroneous charges or explained why there are no receipts for those charges.

I suspect there is a huge bug in their billing system as I'm not sure what else could be responsible for so many unexplained charges but they seem completely unwilling to respond appropriately to this major issue and are leaving me to pay the price for it.

It's really disappointing that I have to share such a negative experience with a site that I have used avidly since I began my journey as a composer and musician, but they have left me with no other option for recouping my losses other than sharing my story.

You can read more about Musescore's billing practices at Reddit.