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Should have been personally signed by the CEO, not "your friends at..."
It doens't sound like a letter the CEO would write -- it appears to be mostly reflective of the opinion/perspective of those that won the lawsuit and took over the site.
I wish the best of luck to Sam and Josh. I hope they are able to take their passion onto other endeavors. Though UF has a lot of talented students, because Gainesville is a dinky city, it doesn't have the same startup resources as on the west cost. Grooveshark was able to give a lot of students the opportunity to work on something cool and bring some exposure to UF.
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[deleted]
Quite frankly - yes, they are the beneficiaries. Independent artists absolutely do not benefit from copyright law at all. Wow... I just... I don't even know how to argue against that. It's demonstrably false and patently absurd. You honestly believe no indie musician has benefited from copyright law? Seriously? Do you understand how compulsory licensing works? Do you really believe no indie artist has ever collected…
Yes, I do understand how licensing works. The RIAA collects royalties on all music, whether or not the artist is signed to one of their labels[0].
Then, the artist has to register with the RIAA (technically, SoundExchange) to get paid, and if the RIAA is in a good mood, they may decide to pay the artist. Or they may decide to keep some or all of the money they collected on behalf of the artist[1].
Again, this applies not just to artists who are signed to a major label, but to independent artists who have no association with the RIAA whatsoever.
Meanwhile, the RIAA files lawsuits on the grounds that the artists (read: the RIAA) is losing money due to filesharing, and when they receive a settlement, they pay literally none of that money to the artists they claimed were harmed, and instead spend that money on... more lawsuits[2].
[0] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/04/24/327063/-Is-the-RIAA...
[1] http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/05/08/soundex...
[2] http://consumerist.com/2008/03/17/riaa-pockets-filesharing-s...
Grooveshark, I want you to know I loved you. As a user. As an ex-employee. You taught me so much. I remember my task as an intern was to turn Autoplay into something more beyond office employees voting on their favorite genres of music. I remember my first attempt at an algorithm, everyone got Coldplay as their recommended artist. I remember when we discovered Hadoop for the first time and our analysis on TBs of data…
Also, you and your team made a great app; I was among the early users. When something is good you tell everyone. When something is really, really good, you don't tell people for a while. :) It was that good.
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You could do some anonymous block-chain ledger type-service, really doubt that it would win over simply bit-torrent though, and ultimately I'm kind of biased since I really would prefer that real creators get to exercise their rights.
What is this blind obsession with "THIS NEEDS A BLOCKCHAIN!!!!!!!"? There's nothing, absolutely nothing, in a system of storing playlists which needs decentralized canonical ordering. A blockchain is literally one of the most inefficient ways of storing data imaginable, and serves no purpose here other than a buzz word.
Also, if people are looking for something to use as a primitive, I'd much rather they look at Freenet. :)
As a native of Gainesville, FL (where Grooveshark is based), this is really sad news. Certainly they made mistakes, but what few see is how much they contributed to the tech community here. Their CTO has personally mentored many companies in the area, and they have a presence at pretty much every tech-related event. I can't think of any other company within a 100-mile radius that can fill that role now that they're g…
The site is just an image with small text, so I've transcribed it here; --- Dear music fans, Today we are shutting down Grooveshark. We started out nearly ten years ago with the goal of helping fans share and discover music. But despite the best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service. That was wrong. We apologize. With…
As part of the settlement agreement with the major record companies,
we have agreed to cease operations immediately, wipe
clean all of the record companies’ copyrighted works and
hand over ownership of this website, our mobile apps and
intellectual property, including our patents and copyrights.
Oh and that $1 song? I bought it because I heard it on one of those videos-that-is-really-just-a-still-frame-so-they-can-share-the-music for the song. Also, what is Grooveshark again? I've heard of it, but I don't think I've ever used it.
My experiences can't be atypical, can they? Was it really a threat worth shutting down and all of the legal expenses? This just hurts me because literally in the last couple of days I watched an unlicensed copy of a song, liked it, and then bought it because I could and I wanted better quality sound. The (different) album was a similar pipeline--A link on Reddit directed me to the song (in the form of a YouTube video) and I then ended up buying the album.
I can't be the only one.
"That was wrong. We apologize"... After what, 3-4 years of mainly illegal content? Wow :) if only every crime was that easy to deal with. It's very Wall Street of them.
Unlicensed, not illegal.
I don't necessarily agree with the licensing model the music and film industries are using, but I'm surprised that, being so visible, they were able to keep going for so long without running into trouble.
Grooveshark, I want you to know I loved you. As a user. As an ex-employee. You taught me so much. I remember my task as an intern was to turn Autoplay into something more beyond office employees voting on their favorite genres of music. I remember my first attempt at an algorithm, everyone got Coldplay as their recommended artist. I remember when we discovered Hadoop for the first time and our analysis on TBs of data…
Funny side note, I discovered Less Than Jake on Grooveshark many years ago.