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Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads

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Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads

#51

Post by marquis »

kin wrote: post #24

Paying Grooveshark member here, will be sad to see this go. As unorganized as their service is, their library is massive. Of course, it's obviously illegal how their library is able to be so massive. I'm hoping I can at least save my playlists so I don't have to recreate them later off memory. I would really love it if Spotify could take some UI lessons from Grooveshark.

I also love Grooveshark, so much that I wish they'd put blocks on how much you can play for free to get more income. I often forget to log in, have adblocker on by default and after a few hours realise I've been using their service completely for 'free'.

Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads

#52

Post by alexhawket »

I like Grooveshark's business model.. I think it's one of the most clever of all the new media companies.

Media is a two way market. Both content owners and buyers must be completely satisfied for the market to work effectively.

The two problems with labels: 1. they want to get paid alot and 2. they want to control their catalogs so that they can control their marketing.

The two problems with customers: 1. they want to pay less and 2. they want to listen to whatever they like.

Grooveshark solves these problems completely. They pay copyright holders to stream songs on the system and charge customers through ads or fees for the service.

At the same time, missing songs in the library can be uploaded by users and they get fairly paid for the "work" from Grooveshark's profits. Content owners don't have to do any work to seed the system with their content but they get paid for every stream or download.

So labels save money by not having to manage their content, since, in theory, it's already been uploaded by users and the crowdsourcers make money "working" for Grooveshark.

The catalog ends up more complete than labels typically allow and the users are happier. Everybody wins.

The only problem is that the system only works if the labels give up some control and they HATE that.

Hopefully Grooveshark survives, I think it has the best shot at finding a workable path for everyone.

Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads

#53

Post by alexhawket »

DevX101 wrote: post #7

Universal doesn't want a settlement or share of ad revenue. They want Grooveshark gone. A Universal insider was quoted as saying the label has declared 'legal jihad' against the startup.[1] This was 1 year ago. So they've had plenty of time to build their war strategy. Besides, even if Grooveshark wanted to make a deal (I'm sure they do), they couldn't afford Universal. The vast majority of grooveshark users don't pa…

The thing about your 300 songs is that they aren't 300 songs in your collection.. they are 300 songs added to the system.

If anyone else streams or buys those songs, then the content owner will get paid.

Meanwhile the ads or the $6 a month fee goes only towards the songs that YOU actually STREAM from the service at streaming rates. Plus you can buy other songs for 99 cents.

If you never listen to your uploaded songs again, someone else will and they will be the ones paying the content owners.

Content owners get paid whenever anyone strams or buys anything on the system regardless of where it came from.

Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads

#54

Post by Adolph_Jobs »

mquander wrote: post #33
Codayus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the word ideological means what you think it means. Ideological behaviour is behaviour motivated by ideas, not profits. Corporate lobbying is essentially always motivated by profit, not ideas. Can you name a company who lobbies for policies they honestly think will lower their profits?

I think it's fair to say that nobody at Universal has any idea if Grooveshark is actually raising or lowering their profits. Nobody has conducted any kind of inquiry to see whether the sales lost via Grooveshark are compensated by the value provided to music-owning consumers (upload, play anywhere) and the free publicity gained, and nobody cares to. Rather, the industry decided long ago that it would take it as an a…

I think by 'ideological' we're referring to a set of moral values, rather than an irrational belief.

Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads

#55

Post by alexhawket »

mquander wrote: post #33
Codayus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the word ideological means what you think it means. Ideological behaviour is behaviour motivated by ideas, not profits. Corporate lobbying is essentially always motivated by profit, not ideas. Can you name a company who lobbies for policies they honestly think will lower their profits?

I think it's fair to say that nobody at Universal has any idea if Grooveshark is actually raising or lowering their profits. Nobody has conducted any kind of inquiry to see whether the sales lost via Grooveshark are compensated by the value provided to music-owning consumers (upload, play anywhere) and the free publicity gained, and nobody cares to. Rather, the industry decided long ago that it would take it as an a…

This lawsuit is likely not pertaining to cost but rather to control.

Grooveshark is not really "piracy" since every content owner gets paid regardless of the origin of the content. Whether it cannibalizes other revenue sources is up for debate.

However, copyright is also about control and owners want complete control of their catalogs.. for a good reason.

Grooveshark crowdsources catalogs without permission from copyright owners and then only lets them manage the content via DMCA takedowns. The labels have to relinquish control to the users for this system to work and that is what they are objecting too.

Money and control is what copyright is about. Big media are ideologically against Grooveshark paying their users to seed the system without the owners consent.

To use an analogy: Grooveshark is a grocery store where the customers personally stock the shelves with Coca-cola products but the company doesn't get to decide which products are available. Maybe the customers don't like Coke Zero and refuse to stock it. Coca-cola can't do anything except remove stock they don't want there.

Except the analogy falls down since Grooveshark is digital and the shelf space is infinite. The labels can add their entire catalog themselves, but they don't want to.

If a band is touring the world to promote an album, their presence in a given country has a huge impact on sales in that country.

If music is leaked across the internet way in advance of the tour/pr/marketing drive, then sales of the album drop precipitously. It's not possible to be everywhere on Earth at once, so it's then impossible to effectively market the album.

Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads

#56

Post by adgar »

baddox wrote: post #27
kin wrote: post #24

Paying Grooveshark member here, will be sad to see this go. As unorganized as their service is, their library is massive. Of course, it's obviously illegal how their library is able to be so massive. I'm hoping I can at least save my playlists so I don't have to recreate them later off memory. I would really love it if Spotify could take some UI lessons from Grooveshark.

It says a lot about the music industry when any service that is good is "obviously illegal."

Every industry has deals that are too good to be true. Hell, buying stolen cartons of cigarettes out the back of a truck is "obviously illegal" but people have done it for centuries. No, I'm not equating copyright violation with theft - you could say "it says a lot about the software industry that a site where you could type in the name of a program and download it for free is 'obviously illegal'". Kind of like the vast majority of uses of the pirate bay are illegal. It doesn't say anything.

Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads

#57

Post by adgar »

code_duck wrote: post #43
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What changed is their lawyers gathered enough evidence to bring them to trial. Grooveshark pre-emptively paying labels is not a replacement for a licensing deal. Grooveshark is a company formed to exploit a legal technicality, nothing more. Their service is indeed good for the end user who doesn't have to pay to listen to any song that they want, but it is obviously bad for music labels and artists.

'obviously' is a very strong term. My own experience anecdotally disproves your last statement entirely, but the case against freely available music 'obviously' being bad for music labels and artists doesn't' end there. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pira... http://www.pcworld.com/article/236214/study_casts_pirate_sit... http://torrentfreak.com/pirates-are-the-music-industrys-most... Indeed,…

My experience, anecdotally, is that I haven't met a single person who bought a song that was available on grooveshark. We even share accounts so that we can create playlists for shared tastes, to save each other the trouble of looking up songs that we don't want to pay for.

Have you considered that being a working musician may be why you are willing to pay for music that is otherwise free?

Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads

#59

Post by caycep »

alexhawket wrote: post #55
mquander wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fair to say that nobody at Universal has any idea if Grooveshark is actually raising or lowering their profits. Nobody has conducted any kind of inquiry to see whether the sales lost via Grooveshark are compensated by the value provided to music-owning consumers (upload, play anywhere) and the free publicity gained, and nobody cares to. Rather, the industry decided long ago that it would take it as an a…

This lawsuit is likely not pertaining to cost but rather to control. Grooveshark is not really "piracy" since every content owner gets paid regardless of the origin of the content. Whether it cannibalizes other revenue sources is up for debate. However, copyright is also about control and owners want complete control of their catalogs.. for a good reason. Grooveshark crowdsources catalogs without permission from copy…

Agree - it's really the cabal of old guys looking to screw over a young upstart competitors.

Crooked movie/entertainment businessmen? Sounds just like those old gangster/movie tycoons in the old Raymond Chandler novels I've been rereading since moving to LA!

Re: Universal Music Sues Grooveshark for 100,000 Illegal Uploads

#60

Post by nextparadigms »

DevX101 wrote: post #7

Universal doesn't want a settlement or share of ad revenue. They want Grooveshark gone. A Universal insider was quoted as saying the label has declared 'legal jihad' against the startup.[1] This was 1 year ago. So they've had plenty of time to build their war strategy. Besides, even if Grooveshark wanted to make a deal (I'm sure they do), they couldn't afford Universal. The vast majority of grooveshark users don't pa…

How is that different from users uploading music videos on Youtube? Google won that case with Viacom, so there's precedent. Plus, as far as I know Grooveshark has some deals set up, so they aren't exactly a "rogue site", or at least it will be much harder to prove.
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