The Grooveshark Settlement [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: The Grooveshark Settlement [pdf]

#51

Post by mechanical_fish » Sun, May 03, 2015, 9:44 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #48

mechanical_fish wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory continues to be that the music industry is just unlucky. They entered the internet era with a product that was perfectly positioned to be annihilated by Napster, iTunes, and YouTube. The pop single was a great product in its day. The recording industry invented pop singles and then spent fifty years perfecting the machine to market them. To focus the marketing, singles were released a few at a time, and rad…

It's "Rumours". If you're going to make a mom-rock jab at Fleetwood Mac, get the spelling right. :P

Fixed.

Don't get me wrong, I own and rather like Rumours, though I cannot spell it. It helps that, after spending a decade mostly not listening to classic-rock radio, I can hear the thing with fresher ears.

Re: The Grooveshark Settlement [pdf]

#52

Post by drewcrawford » Sun, May 03, 2015, 10:28 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #38

drewcrawford wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between what you are describing (commercial zoning) and what AirBnB does (length of tenancy). Commercial zoning is much more obviously a legitimate government function than length of tenancy, which is a textbook economic rigidity. But to answer your question seriously, I think the Japanese have a better zoning system than in the US, theirs allows for, in limited quantities, a bar in a residentia…

So what you're suggesting is that it should be OK for me to buy a bungalow in the middle of Oak Park and literally open up a hotel in it? That's a coherent argument, but not one I think a lot of people share.

I don't know how to answer your question because I don't know what it means to say something "should be OK".

If you're asking if I would prefer to live in an Oak Park where hotels were legal as opposed to where hotels were illegal, of course. If you're asking me if I would be on board with storming into an established community and rewriting their zoning codes over their objections, probably not, although there may be exceptions. If you're asking me if I would sleep well at night while operating a hotel in Oak Park, then I would probably want to meet the surrounding neighbors and decide for myself how much the activity would disturb them, look at the size of the easement, what the noise floor is like, and so on. If you're asking me if I as a homeowner would be annoyed at a neighboring hotel, it's possible, but I'm annoyed at a lot of things, most of which I seek no special right to change.

Those are four answers to your hypothetical, but I don't know whether one of them, or any of them, are the kind of answer you're looking for.

Re: The Grooveshark Settlement [pdf]

#53

Post by tptacek » Sun, May 03, 2015, 11:09 PM UTC

drewcrawford wrote: post #52

tptacek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're suggesting is that it should be OK for me to buy a bungalow in the middle of Oak Park and literally open up a hotel in it? That's a coherent argument, but not one I think a lot of people share.

I don't know how to answer your question because I don't know what it means to say something "should be OK". If you're asking if I would prefer to live in an Oak Park where hotels were legal as opposed to where hotels were illegal, of course. If you're asking me if I would be on board with storming into an established community and rewriting their zoning codes over their objections, probably not, although there may b…

Sure. I think I was fixating on "length of tenancy" as an illegitimate focus for zoning regulation (the implication I took from your comment). But we're pretty far from the original topic of the thread now.

Re: The Grooveshark Settlement [pdf]

#54

Post by efuquen » Mon, May 04, 2015, 9:59 AM UTC

bsbechtel wrote: post #17

legutierr wrote: post #10

Two thoughts on this. First: I was an occasional user of Grooveshark, and whenever I used the service (which had a brilliant UI, by the way) I found myself wondering how they could still be operating, given that they weren't licensed by the major labels. It felt like Napster in a web app, only more centralized (and thus, easier to take down, one would think). Well, the answer seems to be that they have been fighting…

How good was their business model? They survived for 10 years, including financing what I'm sure were expensive legal battles, but how much of that was from revenue and how much from equity/debt financing?

Grooveshark had a paltry amount of equity/debt financing compared to what's common in the valley. In total they raised a couple million, in the low to mid single digits. Part was equity and part debt financing, which was all paid back and some of the equity was also bought back from investors who wanted out after the lawsuits.

Grooveshark was completely self sufficient for a long time, even with the lawyer bills. What really killed it was the pressure from labels to get them kicked off ad networks, mobile app stores (first Apple, then Google), and prevent the more lucrative direct ad deals you need to really survive. Once the summary judgement occurred is when it really started becoming impossible.

Disclaimer I was an early employee that worked there for 5 years.